


Snap, Crackle, Pop

by SergeantCookie



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen, What happens when you follow cars that look like your team mates (but they're not), after being teleported to the middle of nowhere, the road trip from hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SergeantCookie/pseuds/SergeantCookie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sideswipe hates teleporting and therefore, by association, hates Skywarp. Sunstreaker unleashes an unholy wrath upon the Decepticon base due to a misunderstanding. No jet packs or GPS systems were harmed in the making of this fic…Beyond repair anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Snap

It was an ancient practice derived from the brilliant minds of the two of the most skilled warriors known to transformers. It required skill, cunning, bravery and ball bearings to perform. It was a deadly art if executed correctly and fatal to those who were on its receiving end.

"Get off of me you parasitic scraplet!"

"Steer, Sunstreaker, Steer! Wait! I mean _away_ from me! Steer _away_ from me!"

And sometimes it was fatal to those who preformed it as well; so was the practice of jet judo.

Having almost gotten his head cleaved off by an out of control Thundercracker, no thanks to Sunstreaker, Sideswipe was currently hanging onto Skywarp with a grip that would shame the Jaws of Life. Which was a good idea considering the fact that the jet began to barrel roll in attempt to shake off the unwanted passenger.

"Your driving sucks! I'm revoking your pilot's license later!" Sideswipe hollered at his brother through their private com-line.

"Thanks! I'll file that notice under the not caring section. Right below your plan to smother Red's room with peanut butter!" Sunstreaker yelled back, tightening his vice grip on the blue jet's nose as they vanished into a cloud.

"Get off!" Skywarp shrieked as he accelerated in an attempt to lose the large mech (by Autobot standards anyway) hanging off his wings. Sideswipe had no intention to free fall for 40,000 feet so he clung firm.

The jet was getting desperate. The twins were getting better at their jet judo and it was coming to the point it was near impossible to shake them off. In a last ditch attempt to lose Sideswipe, Skywarp did something that had never occurred to him to try in that particular situation.

He teleported.

With a poof, they were gone from the battlefield.

Teleporting was a strange experience. It was a brief second of darkness, and it felt like every atom in one's body was being pulled in different directions by a powerful force. You would be surrounded by a hazy, black chaos, but that would fade to light. The scenery and location would be completely different and all of your atoms would snap back together like a clap of thunder.

If you were not used to it could be a very disorienting experience, and much to Skywarp's delight it had the desired affect. In the woozy daze Sideswipe's grip loosened and the warrior mech slipped off of the black seeker's wings.

Skywarp watched gleefully as the red mech hurdled down toward the Earth. Satisfied with seeing the Autobot plummet to the ground and positive that there was no way that any of his idiotic, Autobot friends would be able to save him from the imminent impact, he teleported himself away to where the rest of the Decepticons were fighting the Autobots.

So, Sideswipe began the 40,000 ft free fall he had been trying to avoid. For a moment his thoughts went blank before finally registering, 'Huh. I'm falling.' That luckily kicked his mind into gear.

He wasn't worried. Most Autobots, save for maybe Tracks or the aerial bots, would've just been screwed in that situation, but Skywarp had made a huge miscalculation regarding Sideswipe.

The red bot revved the engines of his jet pack.

After a split second delay there was an explosion of heat from the mechanism. Warmth from the flames of the thrusters ran down Sideswipe's back and legs and he was propelled forward at an incredible speed. It looked like he was home free.

Not three seconds later there was the sound of metal grinding on metal, and the jet pack began to click and churn in objection to being utilized so soon.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

OK. So _now_ Sideswipe was worried.

It didn't take long for Sideswipe to figure out his folly. He had used it only a few minutes before to its maximum in order to reach Skywarp. It was still overheated from that time. Using the jet pack again so soon was exhausting it of its nonexistent energy.

To his horror it was only a few more seconds later that it began to waver.

Sideswipe was by then 20,000 feet into the air. All the jet pack had to do was last up until he descended to a level that would not cause him to shatter into a million metal shards if he fell.

So it went 15,000 ft, 10,000 ft, 5,000 ft… His trusted jet pack was holding out weakly yet doing the job of keeping him airborne… 2,500 ft, 1,500 ft, 1,000 ft, farther down he went…

Then the engine kicked out.

And since Sideswipe's jet pack forgot not to die he dropped the last 100 feet and went crashing into the earth.

Sideswipe's back protested the rough landing and shrieked an off key duet of rock and jet pack shrapnel. He tumbled through the dirt and rock of the desert until finally coming to a halt and, blessedly, his painful concert of screaming injuries and aching body parts came to a halt. Yet his plight did not go with out an encore.

His jet pack sputtered with a snap, a crackle and "popped" with a small fireworks show before fizzling into the world of the broken and busted. Sideswipe ripped it off his back and stared at the steaming engine aghast.

"Ah come on, don't do this to me!" Sideswipe cried melodramatically attempting to resuscitate the mangled machine with the ever effective 'smack it until it works' method. It gave one last pitiful pop before breaking down completely. Sideswipe mourned solemnly. "You were a great partner in the heat of battle and never failed me. May you rest in piece in the Well of All Sparks little buddy… and say hi to that thing Wheeljack made last week. It was actually pretty cool before it detonated."

With his dead jet pack in tow, Sideswipe straightened to a stand and brushed himself free of dirt and sand. Placing his free hand on his hip he took a look around.

"Looks like we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto," Sideswipe muttered to his lifeless jet pack. "Might as well see where over the rainbow we were tossed off at."

He tried accessing his built in GPS and was received by earsplitting feedback. "OW! What the frick? " he recoiled in shock and pain and shut the malfunctioning system off as fast he physically could. His audios continued to ring long after the horrific noise stopped.

"My navigational system must've been fragged on my landing." He tried accessing his comline but only got white noise. "And my comlink is fried too. Wonderful."

It was time for good old fashion observational skills.

Sideswipe's gaze swept the area. The ground was the same dry, cracked terrain speckled with shrubs as the other place had been. He was still in the great Basin desert that much was certain. Problem was that the desert stretched all the way from California to Utah. He could've been anywhere in that space, not necessarily still in Nevada.

How was he going to get back? Would it be smart to wait until the Autobots traced him? Would they even be able to trace him with all of his navigational and system beacons fragged? Or should he hazard attempting to find his way back himself? He was no Hound, and had minimal tracking skills, but he was sure he'd be able to find the base. How hard could it be?

He scanned the desert. The barren wasteland that was the great basin expanded as far as the optic could see.

But no, that wasn't true. Some 300 yards away he could see the highway. That was always a good start. He jogged over to it quickly, scowling all the while. Every time he stepped on one of the spindly shrub plants their twiggy bodies would get wedged into the grip plating on the bottom of his ped. They crunched unpleasantly and he figured he'd be getting splitters out of those joints for at least a week.

When he reached the highway he stood and stared at it dumbly, looking both ways in indecision. Which way should he go?

Not a moment to soon though he saw something that completely halted all questions regarding how he would get back to the Ark.

Rolling down the cracked, bleached asphalt he could see two familiar vehicles. A red Freightliner Cab-over-engine truck and a black and white Porsche were barreling down the deserted roadway.

Sideswipe's lip components lifted to form a grin. Talk about getting rescued by the Calvary. Now he wouldn't have to navigate his way back to the Ark.

"Optimus? Jazz! Hey, over here!" He called waving his arms, jumping up and down frantically. The two vehicles bypassed him completely and kept on going. Sideswipe stopped his idiotic pantomiming, and for a brief moment was insulted by the fact he was completely ignored. "Where are you going? Wait up!" He called.

The red Lamborghini subspaced his broken jetpack, transformed, revved his engines and sped after the two retreating figures in the distance.

* * *

The Decepticons were gone finally. Unfortunately they had been able to escape with an ample amount of energon cubes from a coal plant.

The Autobots were busy tending to their wounded on the field before they left. There had been a couple of casualties in the fray but they hadn't been severe, and no life had been lost. Cliffjumper had one of his horns broken off via Ravage, Sunstreaker was out cold after being dropped on his head by Thundercracker, and nobody could even get near Windcharger because his magnetic field was fritzing. The poor Bot was covered in half of their group's weaponry already along with other bits and pieces of metal that had been within his proximity.

As the Bot's were patching themselves together Jazz did the headcount to make sure everyone was accounted for.

Everyone _was_ there except for a single, red Lamborghini.

Jazz sighed in minor annoyance. Normally he had no problems with the young bot's antics but he just wanted to get back home. He was missing a monster movie marathon on channel 7.

He activated his comlink and transmitted a message over to Sideswipe. "Hey, Sides. The battle's over. Come out from wherever ya-" He was cut short as the sound of white noise filled the airwaves. Jazz stood in puzzlement before he tried sharpening the frequency. "Sideswipe?" The electrical buzz only got louder. Odd. That had never happened before.

If the 'Bot had just turned his com off there'd be more off a humming sound. The frequency he was receiving was the kind that only happened when the com was broken or the 'Bot was offli-

_Oh_. Oh, Slag.

He looked frantically around to make sure he hadn't just missed Sideswipe amongst the crowd. He redid the headcount once, twice but to his horror the red mech just wasn't there.

He was beginning to panic. Jazz rarely panicked.

Frantically, Jazz began pacing back and forth past the group of roughed up Autobots in search of any sign of a red Lamborghini. He quickly zipped through the throngs of injured mechs but there was no sign of the MIA red frontline mech.

On his frenzied hunt for Sideswipe Jazz instead found Brawn and Trailbreaker some ways away. The fact that they had both been in the twin's initial squad during the Decepticon raid registered and he quickly made his way through the crowd toward them.

They had probably seen Sides last. Perhaps they knew where the missing twin was.

"Hey, Brawn, Trailbreaker!" He hailed the two as he closed the distance with a few more steps. He tried to keep the tone in his voice even keeled, cool.

"What's up, Jazz?" Brawn greeted.

"Sideswipe was in your group, right? Have either of ya seen him anywhere?" Jazz's voice held the barest of nervous undertones in it.

Brawn blinked in confusion and gave Trailbreaker a questioning look. The defensive strategist shrugged.

"He an' his brother attacked the Decepticon jets. I know Sunstreaker's over there somewhere shortening Ratchet's lifespan or somethin' cuz of that fall, but I haven't seen Sides since," Brawn finally said.

"Yeah. At the beginning of the battle the two just jetted off to antagonize the Seekers. Sideswipe took off all willy-nilly with that jetpack of his and last I saw he was terrorizing Skywarp," Trailbreaker began thoughtfully. "Why? Do you need him for something? Or did he break something? He broke something didn't he?"

Jazz stood in stony silence.

Seekers? Skywarp?

"Uh oh." Jazz tried his comline again and received static once more. He tried talking anyway. "Come on, Sideswipe, this isn't funny! Where are ya?"

No reply. Just the monotonous buzz of white noise.

"Wait. You mean Sideswipe's not here?" Trailbreaker asked in surprise.

"I can't get 'em on the horn," Jazz said, slightly alarmed, as he kept trying to call. "And I can't detect his energy signal in the immediate area." _'Keep it cool jazz. Cool as a cucumber.'_

"Did he desert us?" Trailbreaker asked horrified. Jazz shot him a dirty look.

"You stupid? Sideswipe wouldn't go up and leave the Autobot's like that! And he definitely wouldn't just leave his brother behind!"

But if that wasn't the case then it meant Sideswipe was _missing._

Brawn was silent, a grim expression on his face "…Do you think the Decepticons-" He quieted and the others shifted uncomfortably.

The three mechs didn't even want to think of _that_ possibility.

"Naw. Sideswipe wouldn't let himself be-"

Jazz was cut off by a deep, fourth voice. "Jazz?"

Brawn and Trailbreaker jumped at the sound, but Jazz calmly looked back to see Optimus Prime standing behind them.

"Hey, Prime," Jazz responded airily.

Their leader was scuffed from the battle and his windshields were cracked but otherwise appeared to be faring well. "Was everyone accounted for in the roll call? How are the troops doing?"

"Pretty good… I guess," Jazz began vaguely. He _really_ hated this part.

"You guess," Prime repeated flatly.

" _Weeeell,_ 'Charger still needs to be demagnetized and everyone's here for th' most part but…" Jazz shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

"But what?" Optimus asked with his voice laced with tension.

"We're a mech short." Jazz scratched the back of his head absent-mindedly.

Optimus's optics flashed cold as ice, obviously taken aback. "We're missing someone?"

"Yeah."

"Who?"

No point in hiding it. It would be obvious soon anyways.

"We lost Sideswipe," Jazz blurted quickly.

Those three words gave Optimus a slight start, and a numb feeling washed through his body. He stood quietly for a few seconds but finally he asked, "How… did it happen?"

"We're not sure. He was fighting Skywarp and just like that he was gone," Brawn stated solemnly.

Optimus hunched over somberly but quickly straightened. "Does Sunstreaker know?"

"Not yet. Thundercracker was able to shake ol' Sunny off and he sorta landed on his head. Ratch' says he won't be awake for a while," Jazz grimly explained.

"I see. Was the body recovered?"

Brawn looked at him quizzically. "Err. What, body? There's no body."

Optimus's optics widened. Had the young warrior's body been completely vaporized? How? _**How?**_

This was a grim day for the Autobots indeed.

"I… I will inform Sunstreaker of his brother's loss...and the other troops..." The gold warrior was going to be devastated. Ratchet probably wasn't going to fare well with the news either but it was his duty as Prime-

Trailbreaker and Brawn shared a confused look.

"Oh…" understanding suddenly dawned on Jazz. "OH! You think he...No Prime, we didn't mean what it sounded like." _''Least I hope not.'_

"Am I missing something, Jazz? You said we lost him in battle."

"No, Optimus. I meant we really _lost_ Sideswipe. We have no idea where he is."

* * *

They had been driving in silence for nearly an hour.

"Guys, please talk to me. Why are you both so quiet?" Sideswipe whined.

The two vehicles rolled on silently.

"Jazz, come on. What did I do? Are you mad at me?" He received no reply.

What had he done to piss the two off to the point they were using the silent treatment on him? And come to think of it, where was every body else?

For the first time in an hour Sideswipe realized just how empty the highway was.

There was no Hound going on and on about some strange desert flora he found, no absent minded Bluestreak chatter, no Gears grumbling about aching joints and fried dermal plates, no Sunstreaker-

Where was Sunstreaker?

"Optimus. Where's my brother?" Sideswipe asked with mild concern.

He received no reply.

"Optimus, no disrespect or anything but where the hell are we going, and why isn't anyone else here?"

Instead of giving a reply the truck turned off on an approaching ramp while the Porsche kept going straight down the highway.

"Err…" Sideswipe, after a split second decision, followed his "leader" down the ramp. "Prime? Where are we going? How come Jazz left? Where's everybody?" The red truck didn't reply and turned again, this time into a truck pit stop.

The truck rolled slowly and came to a halt in one of the double wide parking spaces next to a blue and black semi. Sideswipe parked himself next to the large vehicle as well.

The red Lamborghini noticed that a lot of greasy, rough looking humans were scowling at him. He sort of wanted to scowl back but ignored them instead. "Prime… Why are we here?" he questioned his leader again.

Just then the cab door of the red truck opened and a huge bald man stepped out. He had large bushy eyebrows and a massive dark beard that swallowed half of his face and made Sideswipe question if the man had a mouth. It almost looked like all of the hair on his head may have been transplanted to his face.

He scratched his backside, hocked and spit a logy, and walked toward the small convenience store while digging in the back pocket of his worn jeans in search for crumpled cash.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that that truck was _not_ Optimus Prime, and Sideswipe realized his folly.

"…whoops."


	2. Crackle

Sideswipe was mentally kicking himself. "Stupid, stupid Sideswipe! Way to go and follow the wrong vehicles! I should've known that wasn't Prime when I saw the 'How's my driving? Call 1-800-EAT SHIT' bumper sticker! Stupid!" he continued berating himself.

He was in his robot mode, sitting in a double wide parking space, in obvious distress. All the truckers that had been glaring at him because they assumed Sideswipe was being driven by some stuck up rich snob suddenly started to pretend he didn't exist.

"Okay, Siders, worse things have happened. Just gotta keep my cool and think logically. Think like Prowl. GPS is destroyed but I gotta find my location. What do humans use when they're lost? Oh, maps! Fricken primitive paper ones. Right. Now where does one acquire these things?"

Sideswipe looked up and noticed the truck stop's convenience store/diner.

He took a glance through the tiny building's large window. The diner was cute in a stuck in the 60's sort of way with black and white tile and bold, red plastic looking booths. There weren't that many people in the diner, just two really old men sitting in one of the booths. It appeared that they were pretty much ignoring each other.

Connected to the diner there was a little convenience store part that sold cigarettes, snack foods, novelty lighters and…road maps!

Sideswipe internally rejoiced.

He walked over to it, careful not to step on any of the truckers scurrying around the premises and got to his knees. Carefully he opened the glass door, and much to his amusement it made a 'ding' as it hit a bell. He had his simpleton moments where he was easily amused. So what?

He tried reaching his arm through the small door and stretched his fingers to get a better reach. He barely was able to brush the counter where the maps were stacked. Unfortunately, as he waved his fingers a small gust was created blowing the papers farther away.

"SLAG!" Sideswipe cursed.

If anyone in the diner was fazed by the cursing, giant red robot obstructing the doorway they sure didn't show it.

One of the old men calmly took a sip from his coffee.

Sideswipe tried to reach and grope for the maps that were now scattered around the floor just out of reach. Unfortunately he couldn't get more then part of his shoulder through the tiny door frame, without breaking it anyway.

In defeat he dropped his arm with a thud, creating a small (to him anyways) crack in the floor. The small wind from that move only blew the papers farther from his reach. He glared.

He needed a new approach.

He looked around wildly and noticed a middle aged woman with red, tightly curled hair and a light blue apron. She appeared to be filling a rounded, glass liquid container with the substance humans referred to as "coffee."

"Hey! Hey, you!" Sideswipe hailed. "Female with the red, poofy thing on your head!"

The woman turned his way. Sideswipe squint his optics to see her nearly microscopic name tag. "Cheryl."

The woman stared up lazily at the red mech and pulled a small notebook from her apron pocket. "What can I get ya, Hun?" she drawled.

"Can I have one of the maps?"

The woman turned her head toward the floor, causing her soft red fro to bob with the motion. She looked back. "Sure thing, Sweetie." She swiped one off the ground and held it out almost in Sideswipe's reach.

Sideswipe grinned and made to grab for it but the woman stuck her other hand out, palm up and said, "That'll be a buck fifty."

Sideswipe stared blankly at her. "A what?"

* * *

The Autobots had to return their injured back to the base but Prime had ordered a few of the more undamaged mechs like Hound and Smokescreen to stay behind. Their job was to search the desert for his missing soldier.

And searched they had. They combed every part of the battlefield but there was no sign of Sideswipe. No pieces of armor, no abandoned weaponry or any sign the mech had even been there. Their search efforts were fruitless and they had to return to the base empty handed.

Prime felt a major headache coming on. Every suggestion he threw out in an effort to find the young soldier was either shot down or came up empty. He had to keep trying though.

"Can we triangulate his position via GPS?" Prime asked.

"Negative. His Global positioning systems aren't responded. They may have been damaged or taken offline," Wheeljack responded unhappily.

"Blaster, Jazz. Any sign of a stress call over the airwaves? Any panic signals?"

"Negatory, Prime. No sign of Siders on the airwaves," Jazz replied. He was typing furiously, and the lights from the screen were flashing across his face.

"I'm gonna expand the signal to cover a wider range," Blaster said, hooking up a wire from a port near his audio directly into the computer system. "I'll bounce a resonance feedback through a satellite and see if old Sideswipe bounces a signal back."

"You do that," Prime approved the action.

Optimus was truly concerned. He would've been worried for _any_ of his soldiers if they had seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth. However with Sideswipe there was one added thing that made the situation so dire.

"So do you think Sunstreaker's gonna go on a rampage the moment he wakes up, or do you think he'll be in shock long enough for us to escape?" Huffer moaned.

"Shut up, Huffer." Ratchet was not in a good mood. "I have Sunstreaker on extra neural buffers. He shouldn't wake up any time soon and by then we'll hopefully have found our red dunce."

"M'not getting' any acoustic signs of Sideswipe. He's not in the immediate area, not even in the state of Nevada," Blaster said with defeat. "The good news is since there's no sign of him he's probably alive. If the Decepticons bumped him off I doubt they'd hang around to clean up the mess."

Blaster received a stony glare from Jazz. It was scary.

"Well, we have no leads. What now?" Optimus inquired.

"We need a change of tactics," Prowl spoke up. "Expanding the search radius would seem logical but we're lacking a focal point to begin at. We need to retrace our steps. Jazz, you said he was last seen engaging Skywarp in aerial combat, correct?"

"If ya wanna call it that," Jazz muttered. "But yeah. Trailbreaker an' Brawn said last they saw he was giving Skywarp a rough time."

"Now what do we know about Skywarp?"

"Primus, Prowl! Does this look like th' time fer twenty one questions?" Ironhide's tone was clipped.

"Just go with it Ironhide." Prime sighed.

"Alright, _fa-hne._ Skywarp's an idiot." Ironhide folded his arms over.

"He can, uh, he can teleport?" Bluestreak scratched the back of his head, unsure if that was the right answer Prowl was trying to get.

It was. "Exactly. There was a period of time between when Sideswipe was last seen and when the Decepticons were falling back where Skywarp just wasn't there. Let's think about this logically for a second. We don't know where Sideswipe is. Last we saw Sideswipe, he was with Skywarp. After that he was gone without a trace. What can we most likely infer from this information?"

All mechs stopped what they were doing and turned their attentions on Prowl. The Datsun simply waited for a response.

Ratchet gave one.

"Skywarp finally grew a brain, teleported and took Sideswipe hostage," Ratchet answered coldly.

* * *

Sideswipe felt like a complete idiot. Knew he looked like one too, but he was kind of desperate.

Here he was, a 20 ft tall robot hunched over an absurdly tiny pay phone, holding the receiver carefully between his thumb and forefinger next to an audio while he tried to dial 911.

He remembered Spike saying something about that number being used in emergencies, and if this whole ordeal didn't warrant an emergency he wasn't sure he knew what did.

Maybe he could patch a message to the Ark to send Skyfire or something to pick him up.

He tried to carefully, oh so carefully to punch in some kind of number. Unfortunately his entire finger pressed into the entire keyboard.

"Damn."

He tried again and just dented the entire number pad in.

"DAMN!"

This went on for some time. Sideswipe had to keep changing phones because he kept breaking them. He was at the last one in the row of them before he finally was able to successfully dial the number.

He heard ringing. He heard ringing!

Never before had such a sound sounded as glorious and welcome as did it then.

' _9-1-1. What is the nature of your emergency?_ ' the dispatcher questioned tonelessly.

"Geeze, you have no idea how happy I am to have gotten a hold of someone! No idea!" Sideswipe was downright jovial.

" _Sir, calm down. Where are you calling from?"_

Sideswipe blinked and glanced down the barren road. "Hell if I know. My GPS was fragged. I'm at a pay phone somewhere."

" _We'll trace the call, Sir. Is the nature of your emergency fire or criminal?"_

"Neither. My designation is the Autobot Sideswipe. In battle I was separated from my team and need a call patched to the-"

" _Whoa, whoa. Did you say Autobot?"_

"Yes. I got separated from my team. I need to contact the Ark."

" _Excuse me?"_

"My com's screwed, and I can't get a hold of my team. I need to contact the Ark."

" _Uh-huh,"_ the dispatcher replied skeptically. _"You said Autobot."_

"Primus, were humans stupid. "Do I need to spell it out for you? Me, _Autobot_ , need to call base, _Ark_."

" _Riiight. And I'm President Lincoln,"_ The dispatcher chimed sarcastically.

The sarcasm went over Sideswipe's head. "Really? Wheeljack told me he off-lined years ago."

" _Look, kid. I can't tell you how many of these 'I'm an Autobot' calls we get."_

"Huh?"

" _My camaro turned out to be a giant alien robot. There are drunk Decepticons raving about metal moons. Metal dinosaurs are breathing fire in my living room.' I've heard it all and quite frankly it's not funny anymore. I'm gonna hang up and I don't want you to call back. You could get arrested for obstructing an emergency line."_

"This isn't a joke! Do you know how long it took me to punch in the code for this airwave?"

The dispatcher hung up.

The tiny phone receiver snapped between Sideswipe's fingers unable to handle his crushing grip. He dropped the fragments, stood up, and promptly began smashing the defenseless payphone under his ped until it was a sparking pancake of wires and metal.

* * *

"Hey bud! The horn means you're in the way!"

Sideswipe was mad. He was still injured from his crash landing, his jetpack was still broken, he still had desert shrubs jammed up in his peds, and he still didn't have a frakin' clue where he was.

And now he was in traffic.

He ignored the angry beeps and horns from the overworked and overstressed humans behind him. It wasn't like he could make the short school bus in front of him go any faster.

It was hot on the highway. Heat haze rippled over the asphalt and it was taking its toll on Sideswipe's undercarriage. It was times like these that Sideswipe wished he had heat resistant armor like his brother, but nooo. Their stupid creators just had to give him pile drivers instead. Load of help that was doing him right now.

There was angrier honking behind him. Sideswipe revved his engines in annoyance and considered going in reverse to mow over the source of the horn.

He was too tired for that though. He needed to recharge. It had been a long day and was nearing dusk already. The sky was darkening, changing from hues of blue to hues of red as the sun began its descent under the horizon.

He needed a nap.

No longer patient enough to deal with the slow moving line of cars, Sideswipe transformed and tiptoed over tightly packed vehicles. The drivers who had been honking at him suddenly went quiet.

He jumped off the beltway overpass and landed on the grassy medium below creating a tremor. He transformed and rolled off one of the exits.

He drove for a while until he found a strip mall, made himself comfortable in one of the parking spaces, completely missing the "no parking here at anytime" sign, and fell into recharge. There was no point going on with only half of his energy capacities anyway.

An hour later a tow truck rolled behind Sideswipe.

* * *

When Ratchet had put Sunstreaker on all those extra neural buffers to keep him in stasis lock, he had made an uncharacteristic mistake. It was a minor oversight caused because his mind had been too set and focused on Sideswipe's disappearance, but would have major repercussions.

Sunstreaker was built specifically for war. Everything in his design was made for combat. Every bit of programming and code had a function. His creators had been extremely thorough in his design and had taken several things into account when they constructed him.

Sunstreaker had been built with a resistance to codes designed to incapacitate the body. That way, if by any chance he was ever captured by the Decepticons they wouldn't be able to 'drug' him with malicious code or render him helpless with paralyzing viruses.

His firewall would essentially cripple the bad strains of code or buffers not long after they were uploaded onto his system. He usually would gain complete control over his systems within a bream.

Said firewall began to target the neural buffers, taking them apart one by one until the anesthetic systems were taken completely off line.

He began to come online.

Sunstreaker's violet-blue optics flickered to life and the gold warrior sat up feeling like he had gotten run over by Astrotrain. Lights were brighter, sounds were sharper, and he definitely was not feeling 100%.

Something clattered and Sunstreaker turned his attention to the source. First Aid had dropped a tray of medical tools in shock of Sunstreaker's abrupt waking. "Sunstreaker?" The protectbot sputtered in surprise.

"What? Ow." Sunstreaker pinched the bridge of his nasal plate with his thumb and forefinger. Primus did his head hurt.

"It just, you were on so many neural buffers. You shouldn't be awake. I guess Ratchet must've set a timer on them to disengage or something." The poor medic looked confused trying to make sense of the situation.

"Right," Sunstreaker muttered sarcastically. The medic obviously wasn't aware of his superior defensive firewalls and it was strange for Ratchet to forget.

Sunstreaker looked up, looked around, went silent for a second, and then he asked something that chilled First Aid's core. "Where's Sideswipe?"

* * *

When Sideswipe woke from his extremely brief recharge, he discovered two things. One, he wasn't where he remembered being before he fell "asleep" and two, to his horror he couldn't move. He tried to roll forward but something was trapping his tires in place.

Agitated and slightly hazy from a not so effective recharge he ran a scan of himself and located the foreign object.

Wouldn't ya know it, a wheel clamp. His day just got better and better.

Too out of it to be angry right away, Sideswipe merely groaned and braced himself for unpleasantries as he forced himself to transform; despite the object jammed under his back tires.

"Ow. Ow. OUCH!" Pain lanced through Sideswipe as he agonizingly transformed out of his vehicle mode into his bipedal form. It required much creative twisting and embarrassing writhing around the horrible metal obstruction locking up his form before he finally got out of his vehicle mode. To his horror though, the awful metal had gotten twisted around his legs, trapping them together like a pair of gnarly shackles.

In agitation he tried standing and promptly fell over. Growling he dragged himself across the grimy ground with his arms before pulling himself back up to sitting position. His entire front, already scratched up and abused, now had a smudge of brown grime that streaked down his entire chest plate and legs.

He was no longer in a parking spot in front of that strip mall he found. He was in a lot alright but it was filled with cars and vehicles of all colors, years, and brands. Some of the cars were shiny, polished, new speed demons while others were rusted, scrap heaps that probably would rattle apart if driven. There was no discrimination though. All of them adorned with their own pair of "boots".

Slowly he came to his senses. "Where the heck am I?"

"You're in an impound lot."

Sideswipe had not necessarily been expecting a response.

A human entered the lot. It had a sharp angular face and probably wore sunglasses a lot because it had a strange tan line around it's eyes and just above it's cheekbones (making them more pronounced then they already were). Its hair was short and it jiggled when it moved. It must've over consumed its fuel source when it refueled.

"You don't seem that surprised that I'm not really a car." Sideswipe tried wiping some of the filth off his chest plate.

"We saw the Autobot insignia and did a system check on your particular vehicle mode to find out who you were. You are the Autobot known as Sideswipe," the man said matter-o-factly.

"Ok then." Sideswipe was mostly clear headed now, the grogginess having faded away due to his own overriding exasperation riling him up. "Why was I impounded?"

"You were in a no parking zone."

"I was?"

The human male (At least Sideswipe thought it was male) nodded.

"Look. There must be some kind of misunderstanding."

"The only misunderstanding was you thinking that _you_ ," the human jabbed its stubby digit in Sideswipe direction, "could park in a tow away zone."

Huh. Was that what the sign had meant? Regardless. "Are you serious? You're not serious are you? I was taking a nap. Do you have any idea what I've been through this past day?"

"S'not my problem, Son. You should've thought about that before you broke the law." He began walking away.

"Hey. Hey wait!" Sideswipe called trying to get up, only to trip because of the mangled metal locked around his ankles. He cursed, but at least the human stopped and turned back to him.

Sideswipe decided that this set of circumstances required a silver tongue and tact. Maybe he could use this situation in his favor. "Look. I'm an Autobot. I'm not familiar with all your human customs yet. If I broke some kind of law, just help me contact my command base and we'll pay whatever fine you need. That's what you humans do to solve your problems right? Pay fines?" That's what happened every time he got a speeding ticket anyways.

"I'm afraid we can't do that." The man shrugged, face stony. "On top of being in a no parking zone you have other serious infractions stacked against you."

"Like what?" Sideswipe spat in irritation. This was beginning to grate on his nerve receptors.

"I figured you'd enquire, so I prepared this brochure for you." Unaffected by the giant glaring robot the man stepped closer and held up a tiny pamphlet. Sideswipe begrudgingly took the absurdly small piece of paper between his thumb and forefinger.

Carefully Sideswipe unfolded it so as not to tear it apart, magnified his vision capacity 50X and began to read out loud. "Why your car was impounded." There was an absurd smiley face graphic next to this statement. "'Your vehicle was impounded because you or another individual driving your vehicle has: a suspended license, a revoked license, or does not have a valid license at all-' A license?" he tilted his head bemused.

"Do you have a license, Son?" the man asked with grim seriousness.

"No, but-"

"Well that's partly why we have our little dilemma here."

Sideswipe's jaw dropped but he quickly snapped it shut and jumped to his defense. "Because I don't have a _license_? Do you even realize how absurd that is?"

"The safety of the roads is no laughing matter Mr. Autobot," the man stated insipidly (in a very Prowl like manner Sideswipe noted dully). "An unlicensed driver is a potential danger to all other motorists on the highway. They may not know the rules of the road or practice safe driving techniques. Do you know how many unlicensed drivers get into accidents and cause havoc on the roadways everyday?"

"So do drunks, but that didn't stop them from getting these licenses did it? Besides I don't think any of that applies to me here. I _am_ the freaking car! It's how I get around, you idiot! Do you stupid humans need a license for walking?" Well there went the tact out the window.

"By all means you could've walked. You Autobots have that capability after all. Then maybe you wouldn't be in the mess. However 'Driving a motor vehicle on public highways in the State of California **is a privilege** and **not a right.** This privilege can be revoked, suspended or denied. A valid California driver's license designates and identifies the bearer as competent to operate a motor vehicle according to state regulations.'" He quoted from some obscure handbook. "Instead you and your unregistered self choose to be reckless."

"I WAS TAKING A NAP!" Sideswipe threw the tiny pamphlet angrily. It simply fluttered to the ground.

"In a no parking zone."

"RRAARG!" Sideswipe made a motion to swat the human, but the man pulled out a tiny black box. A tendril launched from the device and hit Sideswipe in the arm, giving him a 50,000 volt shock.

"OW! What the hell?" It wasn't a particularly painful jolt but the unexpectedness of it made Sideswipe jump in surprise.

The man charged the taser again. "Son, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."

If Sideswipe had decided to throw out every Autobot protocol and moral standing just then he could've flattened the human and bolted out of there before any one was the wiser. However instead he cycled a deep gulp of cold air to cool his overheating insides and tried to stay calm and play along. "Alright, Asshole. How long do I have to be here? Overnight?"

The corpulent human pointed to the leaflet lying forgotten on the ground.

Sideswipe begrudgingly picked it up again and started reading. "'The vehicle in question will be impounded for 30 calendar days. The registered owner will have to pay the towing and the 30-day storage fee to get the vehicle back at the end of this period'." Sideswipe blanched. "30 days?" And there _were_ fees as well. What was it with humans and fines?

"Minimum," The agitating man corrected. "Oh, and you missed the part where there is the possibility that the vehicle in question could be forfeited and taken from you by the state if you have a prior conviction for driving while unlicensed, or with a suspended or revoked license."

Sideswipe's jaw dropped. "You can't be- I _am_ the vehicle."

"I must say. You're situation doesn't look so good, Mr. Autobot, especially since this is not the first time you've driven without a license. You apparently have several speeding infractions in the state of Oregon alone."

Sideswipe was speechless. He was Sideswipe, a mech known for being faster then a speeding ticket. No fuzz had ever been able to actually pull him over. The only cop who managed that was Prowl.

Apparently that didn't stop him from having a record.

"We'll have to do a review of your situation. In the meantime I'd start figuring out how you're going to pay for all of these storing fees."

"This is ridiculous!" Sideswipe roared at the man, tearing the tiny pamphlet to shreds.

The man shrugged. "It's all under the California Vehicle Code." He started walking away.

"This is an injustice! This violates Habeas corpus! I demand my rights! I want my damn phone call!" Sideswipe raged.

"Sorry, Son. Citizen Rights don't apply to giant alien robots." The man began walking away again.

"Yeah, well next time Decepticons try to pummel your city and your sorry ass you can bet this _giant alien robot_ won't be there to cover it!"

He got no reply.

Just before the human left, Sideswipe ran a thorough scan of his captor's form for future reference. Just so he'd know which house he was going to have to "accidentally" crash into when the opportunity presented itself.

To his horror he made a somewhat jarring discovery when his scan was complete. The blobulous human had actually been _female_. Oh, ew. Oh yuck.

After filing that bit of disturbing information far, far into the back of his processor Sideswipe decided never again. Never again would he use semantics on Prowl or Ratchet or Prime. He never realized how truly infuriating it was.

Sideswipe scooted himself back, dragging the horrible metal contraption attached to his legs with him until he was leaning against a metal wall. He shoved a rusted white Subaru that was missing a front tire over a bit to give himself more room and dragged his knees up to his chest in despair.

He sat in silence listening to the hums and electrical whistles of the facility and the far off hollow echoes of sirens from the city some ways away.

He turned to the rusted Subaru. "I could've flattened it. I should've flattened it. Why did I put up with that bastard? It wouldn't have stood a chance against me. Really, what could that gross femme have done to stop me? Give me paper cuts with more useless leaflets? 'Son' me to death?"

The Subaru responded with a skeptical silence.

"You're right. If I had done that, no matter how satisfying it woulda been, Optimus would've just flattened _my_ aft latter…Would've made me feel better though. Primus knows I need some kind of a pick up after this crappy day."

The Subaru said nothing.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I guess I'm just gonna chill out here and wish I could go home then."

Sideswipe pulled his dead jetpack out of subspace, clung to it like it was a teddy bear of sorts, and began plotting his escape.

* * *

Sunstreaker was getting increasingly angry. "I'm not gonna ask again, Doc. Where's Sideswipe?"

"Uh, well. That's not something I'm at liberty to discuss right now. Look, you're still injured and need rest," the medic babbled.

Like a cat Sunstreaker sprang from the recharge berth, all the wires attached to him snapping apart, and rammed First Aid into the wall, scaring the poor medic bot senseless.

He was terrified, but at least his face mask hid it.

Sunstreaker locked his hardened optics directly at First Aid's increasingly frantic ones. True to his word Sunstreaker did not say another word. Instead he used his horrifying glare to get his point across.

"We-we don't know!" First Aid gasped out.

"What?" Sunstreaker gritted, tightening his grip on the protectobot's shoulder guards, lifting him some feet of the ground. "What do you mean you don't know?"

"We don't know!" First Aid wailed frantically, waving his hands in a frenzy. "We don't know where he is! He disappeared from the battlefield!"

Sunstreaker dropped the mech. First Aid crawled as faraway from the melee warrior as he could.

Sideswipe was gone. That thought ran through Sunstreaker's mind some thirty times in succession before he allowed other thoughts to take hold. First Aid said gone, not dead. If Sideswipe was dead he'd know anyways. Then where...?

Sunstreaker's optics flashed. "He was last with Skywarp."

"Uh, yes…" First Aid whimpered.

The pieces clicked together. Sideswipe had gotten himself taken hostage, the idiot.

That thought did not sit well with Sunstreaker. His brother, the one thing he cared more about then his own life, in the hands of the enemy? Who knew what would befall his brash sibling.

Those Deceptibastards were going to pay.

Sunstreaker wordlessly bolted from the medical bay.

First Aid numbly watched him go.

First Aid was between a rock and a hard place. Sunstreaker had the capability to pretty much squish the medic, luckily First Aid had avoided this, but now he was going to have to deal with his own boss instead.

Ratchet wasn't going to be happy.

* * *

"Sooo, what are you in for?" Sideswipe asked.

The rusted, white Subaru did not respond.

"Not a talker then? Was it really that bad, Subitron?" Sideswipe questioned.

He took the Subaru's, now dubbed 'Subitron', silence as a yes.

"I see. I can understand that," Sideswipe grunted as he tried to rip the distorted wheel clamps from his legs. They were surprisingly strong and the fact that Sideswipe was weakened from unattended injuries and a lack of proper recharge wasn't helping. "I can not believe I'm in this mess. No one's gonna let me live it down when I get back. I can hear Ratchet now."

In a low guttural voice that was supposed to be mimicking Ratchet Sideswipe grumbled, "See? This is what being an irresponsible little Fragger gets you. Wrar. Now I'm gonna throw this billhook at your head because I'm a grouch and like watching you suffer." Sideswipe tossed in another "wrar" afterwards for good measures.

Sideswipe took from Subitron's silence that the white car wasn't buying it.

"My impersonation was more accurate then you'd think." Sideswipe tried wrenching the 'boot' off again but failed miserably and almost smacked himself in the face instead when his hands slid from the contraption. Operation "jailbreak" wasn't running as smoothly as he had initially planned. "And I _am_ responsible!" He added as an after thought.

Subitron replied with doubtful silence.

"I really am!"

The unconvinced quiet ensued.

"Alright. You're right. I have my moments. So what? I like to live life on the edge a little, but can you blame me?" Sideswipe rocked backwards into a sitting position.

"My bro and I were commissions, ya know? Autobot's were losing the war so the high council called in for a warrior prototype to be made specifically for combat. The perfect fighter, they wanted. That's were Sunny and I came in. Instead of one they got both of us." He paused seemingly recalling various things.

He took Subitron's noiselessness as a sign to continue.

"We were built, and then everyone got paranoid because of our existence. So for the first few centuries of our lives, everything we did was regulated and restricted. We were always under tabs, and under the watch of the high council and higher ups. We didn't even get to go to the Fundamental Academy at Iacon when we where younger because everyone thought we'd burn the city to the ground or something. So of course, when everyone loosened their reigns on us and we finally got some freedom, we got into habit of testing the limits of that freedom. Living on edge; that's why we start things like jet judo and are so reckless sometimes."

The white car quietly sympathized.

"Some say it's stupid. I _know_ it's stupid. It's how I got into _this_ mess." Sideswipe briefly considered using his pile drivers to free his legs but decided he didn't want to risk damaging them any more then they already were. "And when I get back I'm probably going to have my favorite medic remind me how stupid it was by beating the message into me senselessly. Don't know why he bothers. It hasn't worked yet."

Subitron patiently waited for Sideswipe to elaborate.

"Primus, Sunstreaker's probably gonna take a whack at me too. It's not like we haven't been separated before. We have been twice. Once by accident in a city called Acerbinox (that place sucked let me tell you. I had some crazy old coot bartender chuck me out into the road).Also once when we both tried to going our separate ways. Didn't work. We lasted like what, 2 stellar cycles before back to war we went."

The Subaru remained still, responding with an acknowledging quiet. Sideswipe's face brightened.

"You know I've never really talked to anyone, except for my brother, like that before. Even if I wanted to most people would probably blow me off before I could activate my vocals. No one really takes me seriously unless I'm blowing something up or have something sharp. Probably because of the 'designated Ark prankster' rut I've dug myself into. Not that I don't enjoy it though, it's more of that rebellious nature I got from my Fledgling years I guess. Sunstreaker hates the fact that he always gets dragged down with me. Can't blame him since he never actually _helps_ me, the bastard, but what can you do… And I really don't prank _that_ often. Yeesh. You wire trap the minibots' quarters _once_ , and convince Grimlock that white armored 'Bots taste like coconut and you're labeled for life…" Sideswipe trailed off. "Or it's because they're all afraid of me," he whispered. "Everyone is slightly."

There was a moment of awkwardness.

"Ok. So I have enough hidden firepower to set off a 30,000 pound TNT explosion, but it's not like I've ever gotten a chance to use it." Sideswipe reached for a large metal rod lying on the ground and positioned it between his legs and the 'boot of doom' like a crowbar. "And I have these really neat arm blade things I haven't gotten to break in yet, partly because I have no idea how to activate them on purpose yet, but they could do some damage. Er, don't tell anyone that please."

The Subaru silently promised to keep Sideswipe's confession secret.

Sideswipe pulled the bar and the metal wrapped around Sideswipe's ankles groaned and creaked in protest. Sideswipe wrenched the bar as hard as he could and to his delight the mangled wheel clamp snapped apart freeing his legs. He shoved the metal off and stood; delighted by the fact that he had the mobility of his legs again.

"You know what? You're alright." Sideswipe slapped the hood of the car as he passed it on his way to the fence. "It was great talking to you, but I really got to go."

He reached the fence and easily ripped a hole in the barbwire and chain links. He had one leg out on the side of freedom before he paused and looked back at the white Subaru.

"You should come with me!" Sideswipe declared enthusiastically.

The car politely, silently, declined.

Sideswipe optics dimmed. "I see. You want to serve your time. I can respect that." Sideswipe went back and patted the white car's hood again. "Don't worry buddy! I'll come back for you!"

The car remained perfectly still.

And just like that Sideswipe crossed the fence to freedom. However, before he completely left the facility he broke the taillights of every tow truck on the compound.

Served them right.


	3. Pop

The good news, Sideswipe knew exactly where he was now, Bakersfield California situated in the Parking lot next to a Petco.

He finally had gotten enough sense to pull over and ask for directions.

The good news, he somewhat knew how to get back to the Ark too. If he were able to get onto interstate 5 he'd be on a direct route to Portland. If he got to Portland, an area he knew quite well, he'd be able to find the Ark which was not but an hour's drive away from there.

The bad news was the fact that Portland, from his current position next to the Petco, was roughly 860.55 miles away (according to the map that nice trucker left him). That was 1384.92 kilometers if you wanted to go all metric. Yet by whatever measurement you decided to go by, it still added up to 13 hours and 31 minutes of driving time and that was if you traveled the whole way nonstop at a steady pace of 64.65 miles per hour (or 104.044 km/hour if that at all made any difference).

Now he was used to covering long distances. In fact it seemed every other week they were going on some harebrained adventured to other continents, off to the far reaches of the globe. But usually most of the distance was covered by shuttle (with the help of Skyfire or Omega Supreme) and though they did drive the rest of the distance, they were usually adequately fueled, tuned up and fit for travel.

Sideswipe, was undercharged, overworked, and was injured and sore in places he didn't remember being possible to get sore. Since when could kibble feel pain anyways?

Of the three main things that ailed him, the one that was the most concern was his lack of energy. He was at a whopping 32% capacity and a good 15% of that was being diverted to his self-repair systems. That left him only 17% to use for regular function.

There was no way in Hell he would get to Portland in one go with that kind of energy.

He had no energon cubes on him, and he was positive there weren't any recharge berths anywhere nearby. That pretty much left him with one option which was vampiric recharge (which was not actually what it sounded like).

The correct term wasn't really "vampiric recharge"; it wasn't like they were sucking the life out of some poor life form or anything. That was just a term Jazz, the ever faithful horror movie buff, came up with one day because he was bored.

The correct term was Ambiance Resonance Recharge; ARR for short. Essentially if a mech fell into recharge in an area where there was a high level of electronic devices in use (appliances, cars, etc.) he wouldn't need a recharge berth to supply energy and instead could siphon wasted or excess energy that dispersed and radiated from the surrounding area into his energy reserves. The problem was that it was soooo freaking slow when compared to a good berth or a nice cube of high-grade.

But Sideswipe didn't want to attempt "napping" again. That's what he tried last time and it resulted in him being taken hostage by an androgynous, totalitarian hussy.

Unfortunately the rest of his body was pretty much staging a coup d'état against him in the form of near crippling exhaustion. It was taking all of his will power (which was almost as low as his actual power reserves) to not drop where he was, in mech mode, and curl up for another nap.

But no, he wouldn't submit to his treacherous body. He was still in charge, and though basically everything in him but his mind was telling him to shut up and sleep, as long as his cerebral cortex was in charge, his body would be a dictatorship and not a democracy.

So he transformed, albeit painfully. His rear hubcaps were dented from the Boot and everything else just hurt from his spectacular crash into the desert.

He halfheartedly revved his engines, sounding more like a whiny kitten then the usually thunderous roar he produced.

Being the trooper he was though he rolled faithfully out onto the road, into the sunrise, while singing Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl' in a desperate attempt to stay awake.

And as he rolled on, not a single thought drifted to the chaos that may have been going on at the Ark.

And boy was there a lot of chaos.

* * *

First Aid had wanted to go to Ratchet earlier. Really he did. But one thing had prevented him.

It was a short text message. Only 7 words long, but it was enough to scare First Aid pants-less.

If he wore pants anyways.

The message in question?

-

_To: Protectobot-First_Aid_

_From: Sunstreaker_

_Subject: Warning_

_Getting my idiot. Tell others and die._

_-_

For a very long time he weighed the risks. On one hand, Sunstreaker could flatten him if he told Ratchet. On the other hand, Ratchet could flatten him if he wasn't told.

Either way he was flattened.

In the end though his fear of Ratchet won out against his fear of Sunstreaker and so First Aid went to Wheeljack's lab where Ratchet had holed himself up at.

He approached like he was treading on a landmine (and considering his location that was rather wise). The door was open and First Aid slowly peaked inside.

Wheeljack was not present, and Ratchet, who was sitting at Wheeljack's main work bench, looked like he was angrily rearranging Wheeljack's tools so they were in some kind of order. He was probably doing it to take his mind off of Sideswipe. Deny all he wanted, Ratchet actually happened to care about the twins a lot more then he did a lot of the other mechs on the Ark (how that ended up happening was one of the great, unsolvable mysterious of their time).

First Aid gulped.

"Um…Ratchet. Can I talk to you?" First Aid timidly peered through the door way, his head poked through and his hands gripping at the frame tightly.

"What!?" barked Ratchet as he slammed down a pipe wrench causing the other tools on the table to rattle.

First Aid shrunk back in the doorway so only half of his face was visible.

Ratchet sighed, and rubbed his hand down his face agitatedly before resting his cheek against it. "Sorry 'Aid. I'm not in the best of moods right now. What is it?" He sounded drained.

First Aid hesitated. Perhaps this wasn't the best of times to explain the, uh, Sunstreaker issue.

The whole base was on the verge of fritzing over Sideswipe's disappearance which was weird in way considering the Twin's standing with quite a chunk of the Ark. Yes, there were 'Bots who actually cared for his safety but First Aid was under the impression that a good lot of them were just trying to find Sideswipe before Sunstreaker knew what was going on and decided to go on a killing spree.

Sigh. Well all their efforts were about to go down the drain, and First Aid was about to be the bringer of bad news.

"What _is it_ , First Aid?" Ratchet hissed more vehemently.

"Uh…well… it's, err-" First Aid sighed, not trusting himself to think anymore. Over thinking tended to make him sound like an idiot. Instead he got straight to point and took the plunge. "Sunstreaker woke up."

Ratchet lifted his face from his hand, clear surprise written across his face. "He woke up so soon?"

"Uh, yeah. I was surprised too." First Aid scratched the back of his helm nervously, a human habit he picked up from watching human television.

"Oh frag. Stupid, stupid." Ratchet punctuated every "Stupid" he uttered by smacking himself in the forehead with his palm. "His fraking firewalls. How could I completely forget something like that? They'd dismantle those buffers four times as fast as a normal mech."

"It's, ah, been a stressful day." The Protectobot drummed his fingers against the frame of the door.

"Rrrr, I'll deal with him, just give me a-" Ratchet stopped, noticing for the first time First Aid's death grip on the door and defensive posture. "First Aid," he called, with suspicion lacing his tone, "Come inside please."

Warily First Aid slid around the door frame and took a whole two steps inside the room. He wrung his hands nervously and tried looking everywhere but at Ratchet.

"Closer," Ratchet commanded.

First Aid took another tentative step forward.

" _Closer_ ," Ratchet sounded agitated.

First Aid took two more baby steps.

"FIRST AID! GET THE HELL OVER HERE _NOW_ , DAMN IT!"

First Aid jumped and scrambled forward, almost tripping over himself, to get to his boss.

"Park yourself right here and tell me what happened. What is Sunstreaker doing now? How is he?"

First Aid dropped in the seat his boss motioned toward. He felt like Ratchet's stare was going to bore holes in him soon if he didn't get out any answers.

"I, well, I'm sure he's…he's…" First Aid gulped.

The look on Ratchet's face got darker and darker. "Be honest."

"Aw, lug nuts I don't know." First Aid gave up; basically capitulating to whatever fate would befall him.

"'Aid! This isn't the frakin' Spanish Inquisition. Just tell me what happened!"

"Sunstreaker woke up. And the first thing he asks me is 'Where's Sideswipe.' I didn't want to tell him but-"

"You told him Sideswipe's gone," Ratchet's voice was flat, and betrayed no hints of levity. "How did he react to that?"

"I-" First Aid stopped. Ratchet was going to throttle him. He felt himself rattling in his armor.

That and his fear of Sunstreaker came back with a healthy vengeance. The gold mech would kill him if he found out he was snitched out to Ratchet.

Ratchet was getting impatient. "First Aid. I am your _Boss_ ," the medic declared gravely. "Sunstreaker, if you make him mad at you, you may see in passing in the halls, maybe on the field. If he gives you a hard time or problems for doing something that I require of you from your job, come to me and I can promise you it won't happen again. Me though? Do you know your fate if you fall out of my good graces? You will have to deal with me every-fraggin'-day, and if I find you're hiding information from because you're a little scared of that gold pin head, then I promise I will give you something to _really_ be afraid about."

That was the straw that broke the camels back.

"I didn't have a choice!" First Aid screamed, throwing his arms in the air. He had been pushed over the cusp straight into a breakdown. "He was going to flatten me! Do you know how scary he can be? I couldn't lie to him! He'd kill me! So I told him about Sideswipe. He went all silent and then he ran out! I didn't follow! I valued my life too much for that! I haven't seen or heard of him since. Except for the death threat he texted me if I told anyone. Oh Primus I'm sorry. Please don't kill me!" First Aid threw his arms protectively in front of himself and fell backwards out of the chair.

Ratchet all but rolled his optics at the quivering mess that was First Aid. "First Aid, calm down. I'm proud of you for telling me the truth," he said gently. "I don't expect you to take on mechs like Sunstreaker yet. You'll learn how eventually but until then telling me was the right thing to do. See? That wasn't so hard."

First Aid beamed.

"It's good you told me soon, too." Ratchet said with a more abrasive tone. "We can intercept that moron before he does something stupid. How long ago did he leave?"

First Aid blanched.

Ratchet knit his brows. "How long?"

"Uh- about," First Aid nervously started counting on his fingers. "Four hours ago?" he stated timidly.

Ratchet's face went slack. First Aid felt the room's temperature drop several degrees.

" _WHAT_?!" Ratchet exploded with a broad spectrum of emotions underlying his voice ranging from shock, to horror, to rage.

"Well-I-was-not-sure-how-to-tell-you-and-was-sort-of-scared-that-you'd-over-react-to-me-letting-sunstreaker-go-which-you-didn't-in-the-end-but-I-ended-up-taking-a-long-time-to-gain-the-courage-to-tell-you-anyway-and-time-just-flew-by-and-" his Blurr impersonation was cut short as Ratchet rose violently from his spot and stalked toward him.

"THIS IS WHY I TOOK SO LONG TELL YOU!" First Aid screamed accusatorily and panicked as he backed away. "To avoid this part!" he then turned and fled in five flavors of terror with a furious Ratchet hot on his heels.

Out of the fire and into the frying pan.

* * *

" _Ohhhhh,_

_We're half way there_

_Woooaaaaah!  
Livin' on a prayer!"_

How Sideswipe really wished he were halfway there. Unfortunately though he had only been driving for two hours. Hell, he hadn't even reached San Jose yet.

" _Take my hand and we'll make it - I swear_

 _Woooaaaah!_  
Livin' on a prayer  
We've got to hold on ready or not  
You live for the fight when it's all that you've got  
We're half way there  
Livin' on a prayer"

His Bon Jovi imitation wasn't as awesome and soulful as it usually was, but singing it anyways was doing the job of keeping him awake. Sort of.

Primus, was he tired.

Oh screw it. He had to recharge or it was going to either kill him, or he'd fall asleep in the middle of the road.

Last time he did that though it had gotten him in trouble. Parking spaces wouldn't be safe. He didn't want to get towed again (he shuddered at the thought of the boot).

Not that there was anywhere to pull over. All there was on either side of the highway were forests that just stretched on forever. He needed another place. Somewhere safe.

Then again, perhaps the forest would work after all.

He rolled off of the highway and transformed. Giving a look around, he carefully entered the forest and picked his way through the trees.

There was no way any humans could bother him back here! He traveled several hundred feet inside of the woods, far enough away that no one would bother him, but not far enough to get lost.

He found a mostly empty clearing despite a pile of garbage stacked up near a tree, and a raggedy old tent. Sideswipe dropped on the spot, landing on top of the tent basically crushing it flat, and transformed into vehicle mood (mostly so he wouldn't have to figure how to get comfortable laying on the ground). Since there were many vehicles nearby, ARR would work relatively well despite the odd location.

Sideswipe set his internal timer. He'd recharge no longer then two hours. That would be enough time to regain enough energy to let him keep going for another six or so hours on the road. He'd cover the distance, rest once more, and then finish the last leg of the trip in a final swoop. He'd be back at the Ark by the end of the day.

It sounded like a plan. He let his thoughts face, and went unconscious, completely unaware of the fact that the tent he had dropped on top of was actually someone's house.

* * *

So the Autobots came to the conclusion that Sideswipe was being held as a prisoner of war by the Decepticons. It was a logical conclusion that made sense but acting on it was way more difficult then they initially had thought it would be.

For starters, they weren't 100% sure that was actually where the red mech was. If the Decepticons did have him they made no move in informing the Autobots of this (using him to extort the Autobots and whatnot) and asking the Decepticons outright of Sideswipe's whereabouts would not be the smartest of moves. Secondly, even if he was with the Decepticons, it was tricky coming up with a strategic plan to rescue the mech.

There was no guarantee he was alive for one. And if they (they being the Autobot forces) just barged into the Decepticon base there was the chance that if he was alive, the Decepticons would kill him in defiance to the Autobot's rescue attempts. They'd have to be discreet. Perhaps send special ops to retrieve the young mech. But such a dangerous mission would need preparation and thought. You wouldn't send a mech behind enemy lines all willy-nilly. That could end up endangering the rescuer along with the rescue-y.

But they were working with such a large informational black hole and so many 'what ifs' that it was hard to come up with _anything_. And to compound the problem time was not on their hands.

So, much to Optimus Prime's disdain, the Autobots had spent several hours, throwing out and scrapping various plans and ideas, and were no closer to finding Sideswipe then they had been the previous day when they scoured the desert for him.

Prime felt his mood get darker and darker. It was times like these that you needed a Sideswipe, someone to make fun of the somber mood and up the cheer of everyone else.

But no. Instead all he got was room of frustrated mechs and a growing headache that seemed to acutely place itself right behind his left optic.

It could get worse, but not by much.

And then Ratchet tromped in, half dragging First Aid after him.

"We have a problem," Ratchet groused sounding like he had a tenuous grasp on his temper.

"What?" Optimus eyed his CMO askance, not sure he really wanted to know. He had enough problems as it was.

"Sunstreaker," Ratchet snarled, half throwing First Aid beside him, before crossing his arms angrily.

First Aid stood stone still next to his Boss doing everything in his power (hence the statue impersonation) not to incite his wrath.

"What about Sunstreaker?" Prime asked.

"He woke up," Ratchet answered.

Several mechs stopped what they were doing and the other half shuddered, obviously hoping to have avoided Sunstreaker's waking.

"How's he doin'?" Jazz frowned.

"Wouldn't know." Ratchet sent a sideways glare toward First Aid who looked like he wanted to shrivel up on the spot in fear and shame. "He apparently left the Ark four hours ago."

That was quite the bomb to drop.

"What?!" the top three of the commanding element all yelled at the same time.

"Jinx!"

Prowl and Optimus glared at Jazz obviously not in the mood.

The saboteur frowned. "M'sorry. Reflex. Ignore it."

"How'd he get past Red Alert? He'd know if anyone tried to leave the Ark?" Hound asked with confusion.

"Maybe because you all have Red Alert doing state sweeps instead of focusing on the ARK?" Ratchet snapped back. "This whole search party we've got going has been a fragging mess and has only helped screw up the functions of the Ark. We're no closer to finding Sideswipe then we were yesterday and now we've lost his brother."

"Ratchet's right. We are not managing this situation well at all," Prime groaned. "Any ideas on where he went?"

"He shut his comlink off. Trust me. I was screaming at empty airwaves the entire way here."

"That wasn't all you were screaming at," First Aid, muttered dejectedly. Ratchet kicked him in the back of his leg.

"Duh. He's gonna try t' find Sideswipe," Blaster said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh, hell. You're _right_ ," Ratchet covered his cerulean colored optics with one hand.

"Thing is though, unlike Siders, I can actually find _Sunstreaker_. His GPS should be perfectly intact right?" Blaster asked.

"You're right!" Jazz giddily jumped clear over a consol like it was a hurdle, and landed himself in a chair next to Blaster. He pulled on a device that looked strangely like headphones and furiously began typing away at the consol. "Ol' Sunshine's GPS is intact. We can triangulate his position. And with a little magic from the Jazzmeister, and ol' Blaster here we should know where he is in about thirty seconds."

"Good. Wheeljack, Inform the Aerialbots sweeping the desert to prepare to receive coordinates so they can intercept Sunstreaker, where ever he went."

"Gotcha Prime."

"Oh Primus, where he went is so obvious," Prowl informed the mechs in the room. "Sunstreaker is not an idiot. He can put two and two together."

"What are you getting at Prowl?" Prime asked with mild trepidation.

"He probably came to the same conclusion we did. He probably thinks Skywarp took Sideswipe. And when it comes to his brother, he tends to not act rationally. If he assumed his brother was taken as a prisoner of war by the Decepticons, what is the most likely course of action he would take?"

Everyone, but Blaster and Jazz, stopped what they were doing. A dreadful silence ensued as Prowl's words finally started to make sense.

"No. He wouldn't," Hound said in disbelief

"Not even Sunstreaker would think of…" Ratchet cut himself off, rethinking the rest of that statement.

"Uh, yes he would." The attention of the room focused on Jazz. "We found Sunny. He's on route to the Decepticon base. Arrival time, 3 minutes and 42 seconds.

Another, excruciating quiet ensued, as the mechs let that piece of knowledge fully percolate into their processors.

The silence was broken by Optimus, and while it was an extremely un-Prime like thing to say it pretty much summed up what every other mech in the room was thinking.

"Damn."

* * *

Dead end stalked the halls almost in a ghost like manner.

He absentmindedly ran a shammy rag over his arm, despite the fact that it already disgustingly immaculate, as he walked, wallowing in the insignificance that was existence.

 _Whump_.

The hollowed thud echoed through the empty hall.

Dead End was snapped out of his pity-party and actually turned to look at the source of the sound. He was in one of the outer halls, so whatever had made that noise had been in the ocean outside.

It was probably nothing. Even if it was something it didn't matter. When it all boiled down _nothing_ really mattered.

As for the sound, sometimes, some of the larger sea life, such as the great whites or other large fish, would ram themselves up against the hull of the Nemesis. It was no big deal really-

_**WHUMP.** _

Dead End jumped that time.

That did not sound like a shark.

The hull groaned and creaked as if something was trying to pull apart the wall by its seams. As quickly as the sound came it stopped.

For a moment it was quiet and Dead end probably should've taken that moment to evacuate, but he couldn't really motivate himself to run.

What would the point be? If something happened it happened.

And something did happen.

A white hot energy blade punctured through the hall's wall, springing a little leak.

The leak grew as the blade was dragged down to the floor, creating both a horrid squealing and popping sound as metal was ripped, heated and then re-cooled by the ocean outside, and a massive tear that was spewing ocean water.

Then the blade vanished.

Dead End was frozen in his tracks, salt water pooling and rising to his ankles.

He watched with morbid fascination as Gold fingers wedged themselves through the rip, and suddenly the split in the wall was wrenched apart creating a large, gaping hole.

The last thing Dead End saw was a wave of water, and gold hurdling at him.

Well it was inevitable really that one day he would expire, it just appeared that it would be happening a little sooner then he expected.

At least the way he would go out would be interesting.

* * *

"Lord Megatron! There's been an apparent Security breach!"

A seeker was talking to him. Which one Megatron wasn't sure. There were a lot of seekers in the Decepticon base. It was just that no one really cared about them.

The seekers were sort of the paper tissues of the Decepticon army: You used them to wipe your nose and then you threw them away.

Come to think of it the only seekers he used (that had any real worth anyways) were Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker…and sometimes, _sometimes_ , Sunstorm. But _that_ seeker had more issues then the New York times and was often in solitary confinement so he wasn't seen much anyway (In fact, he appeared so little that there was a running bet circulating the Nemesis on whether or not he really existed).

The rest of them were nameless fodder really, there just to bump their numbers up.

This one was garishly bright green. When was the last time he had seen an optic-burningly green seeker? Was it when Cybertron's orbit was tearing the Earth apart? That was months ago.

Normally Megatron didn't care what their names were but for some reason it was bothering him. What was this seeker's name?

Hurm… It was Acid something. Acid Lark? No. Acid Gale? Closer, but no…

Acid Rain?

"The tear in the hall has been repaired by maintenance drones, but there is an unidentified mech on board the Nemesis."

Grrr. It was driving him insane! What the hell was this flyer's name?

"Lord Megatron?"

Oh wait.

"What is it, Acid Storm?" Ha! And who said who couldn't keep track of his seekers?

"Sir, there's an Autobot infiltrating…Well, more like attacking the base."

That threw Megatron for a little loop. "An Autobot. As in just _one_ Autobot."

"Uh, yes Lord Megatron. Just one."

"A spy? Is it one of the blasted special Operation mechs?" How he hated the Autobot special Operations team. Particularly that Psy-op of theirs Jazz.

"Um, no actually. This Autobot is being quite vocal about his presence."

"Hmm. Is it an Autobot deserter perhaps?" That, at least, would be interesting.

"Well last I heard he was screaming something about putting Decepticon heads on a pike so no, I don't believe so, Sir."

Wow. Autobots were dumber then he initially had thought they were then. What would possess one Autobot to attempt taking on the Decepticon ranks in such a forward manner? With out backup? There had to be catch. It must've been one of their idiotic little schemes to undermine the Decepticon regime.

"Interesting. That will be all…" Megatron actually, in the thirty seconds he took to speak with the jet, had forgotten his name again. "-You," he settled with and walked briskly toward the command center.

He entered the room on a balcony that was raised above where the majority of the troops were converging.

"Decepticons!" Megatron called down to his troops, all of them turning from their… Whatever it was they did when they weren't in battle, and gave him their unbridled attention.

"It appears there's an Autobot somewhere in our midst foolish enough to take us all on alone."

There was some jeering and laughter from the crowd, apparently amused that an Autobot would wander solo behind enemy lines.

"It was getting boring around here anyways!"

"I was dying for some target practice."

"I bet you we can offline 'im in four seconds flat!"

"Ha! I bet we can do it in 2."

"Which one of those morons is it?"

That last one was actually a good question. Acid Rain, no…Acid… Bah, who cared? The seeker with the awful green paintjob hadn't told him which Autobot had decided to foolishly brave the wolves den. "Soundwave," Megatron Hailed. "Triangulate the Autobot's position and bring him up on the monitor."

"Yes, Megatron," Soundwave complied and suddenly all the monitors flickered to life revealing the identity of the Autobot trespasser.

"We can take him no pro-oh slag! It's _that_ Autobot!?"

The mood in the room suddenly changed.

"What? Who's that Autobot? I can't see! Move your damn skid plates!" Rumble complained as mechs of much larger size crowded around the screen.

"The yellow one!" someone yelled out.

"What? The lame bug?" Frenzy growled, trying to shove his way through the crowd as well.

"No! The _other_ yellow one!"

"Wait. The one that bent Thundercracker's wings backward the other day?"

"Uh…yeah. Yup. That's him."

"Well Slag."

That was the last Autobot anyone (mostly anyone. There were a few psychos who'd battle the gold mech simply for the fun of it) wanted to pit themselves against. Sure if enough of them attacked all at once they could take him down, but some optics and limbs would be lost on the Decepticon's side before that'd be possible. It wasn't as fun of a prospect as simply beating up on a helpless minibot or something of the like would've been.

"What is he doing here, and when can I take him on?" Drag Strip asked with unbridled glee in his voice.

Megatron and his underlings watched the screen as Sunstreaker suddenly broke into a run. The hall security cameras followed him as he went Quarterback on Reflector, charging and then punting him so hard he went straight through a wall with a hollowed thunk.

Many cons snickered at the camera's misfortune. No one liked Reflector anyways. He didn't do anything important and had stalker like, paparazzi tendencies that served no purpose other than to annoy the hell out of his fellows.

On the screen Sunstreaker moved again. Hearing someone approaching, he hid in a doorway just as another Decepticon entered the hall and became visible on the monitor.

At this point, none of the Con's in the command center were even thinking about off-lining Sunstreaker anymore, and were all instead glued to the monitor screens as if they were watching some strangely woven soap opera designed specifically for sociopaths.

The room instantly quieted, a byproduct resulting from morbid fascination as an unfortunate stray seeker, one with a brown paintjob, was ill-fated enough to wander into the hall alone, completely unaware of the feral Autobot.

Of course no one had bothered to send a message through the comlines to warn said seeker of the impending doom. That'd be boring, and honestly, the others didn't really care that much.

The Autobot saw the Seeker before the Seeker saw the Autobot. Sunstreaker lunged with an energy blade.

Some of the Decepticons winced as they watched the brown seeker, old what's-his-face, get eviscerated by the enraged mech. Others cheered Sunstreaker on, thrilled by the violence. As for the poor seeker he was able to gush out one last audio splitting howl before Sunstreaker jammed the blade into his face, destroying his cerebral cortex and silencing him for good.

Watching Sunstreaker go on an angry, bloody rampage truly shook the fundamental stereotype that most of the Decepticons placed the Autobots in; that they were all squishy-hugging, peace loving wusses. Yet at the same time it was utterly fascinating to watch an Autobot engage in such acts of brutality, which happened to bring up the question-

"Why isn't he a Decepticon?" Scrapper spoke in confusion. He had just witnessed an artistic maiming that no Autobot should have been capable of. It was mind-boggling. "No really. Why isn't he a Decepticon? It doesn't make sense."

That was actually a good question, Megatron began to think. The yellow Autobot _would_ make an excellent Decepticon.

"Decepticons!" Sunstreaker bellowed in the empty halls. "This is your warning! Release my brother, or I'll tear every one of your fragging heads off!"

It was an amusing threat really. Even that Autobot couldn't _really_ believe that he'd survive against the Decepticons if they were taking the situation seriously. It was one thing to go against fodder and something completely different when going up against the actual elite of their forces. The Autobot was out numbered and outgunned. You had to give him credit for trying though.

However Sunstreaker's statement, in revealing why he was even at the Decepticon's base in the first place, did bring about a curious question.

Megatron walked down the stairs leading from the balcony to the ground level all the rest of his troops were on. He gave them all a stone cold once over and then turned his attention to the monitor.

"By raise of hand," Megatron growled not taking his fiery-red optics off the screen, "Did anyone take an Autobot prisoner with out my knowing?"

No hands went up.

"Did anyone _kill_ an Autobot yesterday?"

No one responded.

"SKYWARP!" Sunstreaker roared again. "I'm coming after you, you Slagger! If any of you Decepticons harmed one servo on Sideswipe…" too enraged to finish his sentence he instead let out a wild war whoop and tore down the hall obviously in search of…something.

"His brother?" Thundercracker sent an accusatory glare at his trine mate.

"Skywarp, why does this Autobot seem to think that _you_ took a prisoner?" Megatron voice was deceptively flat. The irritation was evident though. "Are you not telling me something?"

Every Decepticon turned to look at Skywarp. Skywarp threw his hands up defensively. "I _don't_ have his brother. I dropped the Autobot on the battlefield! He's probably dead."

Megatron locked his gaze on the black seeker, torn between being impressed and severely annoyed. "You killed an Autobot? One of their front-liners?"

"Well, yeah. Actually I'm not sure. Well…" Skywarp paused densely. "I think so. I teleported somewhere his comrades couldn't get to him and dropped him 50,000 ft so, yeah, he should be somewhere in the desert in a million pieces right now."

Apparently Skywarp had actually gotten a good idea for once.

Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

"Good work, Skywarp. You may have rid us one of our biggest problems. This Autobot however," Megatron pointed to the screen, indicating Sunstreaker, "Thinks that we have taken his brother prisoner. Interesting."

Another gargled scream flitted from the monitor. The Decepticons looked just in time to see a freshly decapitated lavender Seeker fall, his head rolling away from his body like a discarded soccer ball.

"Hey. Hey!" Swindle yelled, recognition and ofense saturating his face. "Is that the guy who was in charge of the flamethrower? He owed me money! Damn you, Cozenage!"

"…we serisouly had a seeker named _Cozenage_?" Dirge asked in mild bewilderment, not the least bit disturbed that he saw a fellow seeker get beheaded. "What the hell does that even mean?"

"Both of you shut up!" Someone in the crowd yelled. "We're trying to see what happens!"

Swindle and Dirge quieted and went back to watching the screens along with the masses.

Sunstreaker stood, violet optics glittering like ice, drenched in blue mech fluid, looking quite…beautiful in an angry 'I'm-going-to-beat-the-living-daylights-out-of-you' way that perhaps you had to be a Decepticon to appreciate. He slowly turned his head so he was looking directly in the security feed. He gestured rudely at the camera, pulled a rifle out of subspace and snapped off a clean shot.

The security screen for that hall was filled with white noise, and everyone in the command center groaned at the loss of their unexpected entertainment.

"Oh come on! Can't we get some good reception in here?" someone from the crowd groused.

"Hey let's just pull up another feed."

"I'm working on it!" Soundwave was shoved out of the way by Ramjet who instantly began fiddling with the security controls.

Megatron continued to stare at the screen as Ramjet tried to bring up another security feed. This Autobot was interesting. Very interesting. Megatron had never really paid attention to the mechs on the battlefield (anyone who was not Prime didn't warrant his attention) so he had never noticed how amazingly brutal this Autobot could be. Prime didn't realize what a strategic asset he had. He probably made the gold mech "hold back" or something ridiculous like that on the battlefield.

An idea spawned in the warlord's head.

Megatron tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Soundwave, how many seekers do we have on Earth?"

The communications officer was still brushing himself off all the while glaring icily at Ramjet (despite a lack of facial expressions) but turned to answer his leader. "26."

"How many are at base?"

"Seekers: 12 present." Soundwave paused and recalculated that number in his head. "Correction: 10 functioning."

"Hmm. Keep Starscream's trine here. Send the rest of them on the offensive against the Autobot. Do it in sets."

"Overkill?" Soundwave queried.

"Not necessarily. I wish to test this Autobots mettle." A dastardly evil grin spread across Megatron's face. "I'm curious to see how he fares. Send them to his position."

"You are a complete fool!" Starscream shrilly spoke up from behind.

Megatron all but rolled his optics. He wasn't even aware the Air commander was in the room. It had been, of course, only a matter of time before he made himself evident. Partly because he had something to say, and partly because he felt ignored. "Why procrastinate and play foolish games with the enemy? We could easily take this mech out and cripple the Autobot's frontline If-"

Megatron nailed Starscream in the face with a well aimed back fist, not even looking at the jet while he did so. It was kind of halfhearted, more of a reflex he developed for when ever he heard Starscream begin to speak, regardless of what the flyer was saying. All the same the blow knocked his second in command clear out.

The warlord's fiery gaze swept across his troops. "Any one else have an issue with my decisions?" he growled.

No one said anything.

"Good. Now, Men, make yourselves comfortable. I think we're going to be in for an interesting show."

Another feed was brought up on the monitors and Sunstreaker became visible once again. He was instantly confronted by two seekers sent on Soundwave's command.

Carnage ensued.

* * *

Sideswipe woke up and stretched painfully. He checked his internal clock and saw that he had woken up earlier then he had intended too. Oh well. It was probably better anyway, and, holy Primus, there was something touching him, and it was in his front seat.

Sideswipe ran a scan of the object.

It was a disgustingly grimy human, with graying hair, a gaunt face, and toothless mouth. His skin was pocked, and scarred, and the human appeared to be breeding several strains of bacteria on his person.

It was horrifying.

"GYAH!" Sideswipe shrieked, and would later berate himself for reacting like, well, Sunstreaker would've.

The man, startled by the noise, jerked up and looked around wildly.

"Wa-?" he gazed around aimlessly, mouth open revealing a maw of few and rotting teeth. "Who's there?" The odors wafting from the man weren't all that pleasant either.

"What are you doing in me?" Sideswipe asked, appalled. "How'd you even get in?"

"Hey!" The old man barked in agitation, sleepiness having worn off. "Who's in my house?"

That statement honestly confused Sideswipe. "Buh?" was the only response he could manage.

"Get out of my house!" The man screamed vehemently, clawing his long, dirty fingernails into Sideswipe's back seat possessively.

"It's not your house! It's mine! I am the house!…car." Sideswipe paused and counted to five before he started speaking again. "Dude… just get out."

"You get out! This is my home. I am lord of the castle. Leave before I send for the royal guards to smite thee!"

What bothered Sideswipe was the fact that the crazy toothless man seemed completely serious.

"Look, flesh wad. I have never transformed with one of you humans inside of me before, partly because I've never given one a ride, and partly because it sounds messy. Now I am in a crappy mood right now and am this close to transforming, but scraping your entrails out of my manifolds does not sound like a fun prospect. Now save us both the hassle and me the mess and get out."

"Who'sawhatit? Who said that?" The scraggly man looked around wildly.

"ME! Me you idiot! The bot you're treating like real estate!"

"…God?"

"NO!"

"…Jiminy?"

"N-what?"

"Are you my conscious?"

"…if I say yes will you listen to me."

"Ayup."

For the second time in less then a day, Sideswipe was doing everything he could to refrain from murdering a human.

"Then yes. I am your conscious. The car you are in is not a dwelling for humans. You need to get out."

"By my grandmothers cream pie I say nay!" the man declared with a crazed look in his eye. "Why would I give up my new and better house that dropped on my old house?"

Old house?

Oh, Sideswipe mentally smacked himself. The tent he ran over. And if he remembered correctly, tents were not usually considered a valid place of permanent dwelling. That meant this man was homeless.

"Look Mr… Whatever you're called. I didn't mean to run over your tent. If you could just get out, I could transform and help fix-"

"My names not Mr. Whatever! That would be Colonel Sharp to you boy," The crazed man pointed a finger accusingly at nothing.

Sideswipe felt his Spark drop. "You're a colonel? You're military?"

"For 18 proud years! I'm serving in Korea." He declared proudly, bearing a wide toothless grin.

Sideswipe noted the present tense, but the war in Korea had ended 33 years ago.

"You were a warrior?" Sideswipe asked in horror. He redid the scan of the human. His clothes were grimy, mix matched and layered, but he noticed that there was a rusted purple heart pinned to the breast of his coat and a worn Green Beret was set on top of his wild matted hair.

"Ayup! I'm on a stakeout! My buddies Tomcat and Sergeant Cookie should be back from recon at any time now! But SHHH!" He shushed noisily, finger to his cracked lips. "Don't tell the enemy. It's a surprise." The man opened Sideswipe's door and stepped out. He ran over to the junk pile that was collected near a tree, and pulled pair of broken, binoculars out.

The man pulled them to his eyes backward. "Any minute now they'll be comin' over the hill, and through the woods, and to Grandma's house we'll go!"

Sideswipe for some reason, felt his spark clench.

The human thought he was still at war. This man had some strange Post traumatic Stress Disorder and was completely insane.

And this colonel Sharp, a man, as warped and insane as he was, had once been a soldier like Sideswipe was. Despite the differences in size, and species, the Cybertronian felt a sort of unwanted understanding and camaraderie being created.

Here was a man who had seen combat. And he may have been so traumatized he had probably gone insane, couldn't assimilate to society and was left forgotten. And human's were frail, their minds fragile. Perhaps the man had gone to drugs to release himself from the horrors of war, and ended up destroying his mind, just like the stories Spike told him.

This man's fate was something Sideswipe was worried would happen to himself if he ever saw the end of the war.

Being alone, and obsolete. Not knowing how to do anything else but fight. It sounded like a terrible existence.

Sideswipe actually was feeling…bad for the human. Bad as in, instead of ditching him and getting back on the road like he initially wanted to do, he felt like he had to do something for the smelly, toothless old man.

Oh, Damn it.

Sideswipe popped his door open again. "Get in the in." He demanded.

The man jerked around at the sound of a voice, still holding the broken binoculars to his face.

"How'd you get so far away?"

"Get in the car before I change my mind." Sideswipe's engines rumbled.

The man dropped the binoculars and starred blankly at the Lamborghini. "Who said that?"

"GET IN THE DAMN CAR!" Sideswipe raged, desperately trying not to change his mind.

The man happily complied and climbed into the passenger's seat.

Sideswipe cringed feeling the dirt, and oils from the homeless human rubbing off on his interior again. He simply shuddered, and shut his door, and rolled off.

"And they'll be coming around the mountain when they come," the old man smiled, and fell asleep in.

Sideswipe, worse for ware himself, valiantly drove along until he found an exit and took it.

He entered a small town, and drove all around it in search for a homeless shelter he could leave the man at. At least that way the human would have some place to refuel at, and a place to sleep.

He finally found a large building called "The Callaway Humane Shelter". "Hey, we're here." He slowly rolled to a stop, and Sideswipe rattled his frame gently, waking the old, homeless man.

"Huh who said that?" the Hobo looked around dazedly.

Sideswipe opened his door and let the old man out. Before any more questions could be asked, he had left feeling immensely proud of his good deed, and was back on route to I-5.

The old man looked at the building bewildered.

You really had to give Sideswipe props for trying. He meant well, really he did, and though he was better versed in Earth customs then most mechs, he still made mistakes regarding certain things.

Which is probably why when Sideswipe took the homeless man to a shelter he accidentally left the scraggily man at an _animal_ shelter

Sideswipe really _had_ meant well though.


	4. Almost There

The teenage girl giggled as her boyfriend placed a sloppy kiss on her neck and slid his hand in her back pocket as they walked.

The pair was one familiar to most: The pretty good girl and the bad boy trouble maker.

"Oh stop it," she laughed. "Now what did you want to show me?"

"You won't believe it baby, I just found it abandoned here." He lead her off the side of the road and over several feet through the brush.

She gasped when she saw its red paint glimmer through the trees.

"Oh wow! Is this a Lamborghini Countach? And it's just deserted here!" She squealed in amazement. "How did you find this?"

"I found it a half hour ago. Saw it's paint through the trees as I was passing by to come get you."

"It's so pretty," She ran her finger tips lightly over the red hood. The metal was so smooth it felt buttery.

"Sure the paintjob's a little messed up but Damn!" The boy admired it. "Someone just abandoned it here to rust."

She sighed. "What a shame. I'd love to go for a ride. I'd love to just sit in the seat. It's such a nice car. "

Suddenly an idea struck her head and she grinned mischievously. She sidled up to her boyfriend's side and lazily started tracing circles on his chest with her finger. "A _really_ nice car."

He got the hint. "Hey baby. Wanna go for a ride?"

She bat her eyelashes. "I thought you'd never ask."

To his surprise the doors were unlocked. He got in the Driver's seat while his girlfriend got in on the passenger's side. He quickly got to work on hotwiring the vehicle.

The vehicle that wasn't _really_ a car.

* * *

From the sounds of it, you would've figured the Decepticons were watching the WWF or something, not watching their own teammates getting thrashed on the big screen.

"Ooooh!" the Decepticons roared in unison. Sunstreaker went and dropkicked the black and blue seeker in the face before coming swiftly down and sweeping the orange one's feet from under him.

The blue-black and orange seekers were managing themselves much better than the previous four had. Both were from the same Trine and had some semblance of the concept of teamwork. Their goal: taking down the furious gold mech.

Yet with every blow they managed to land on Sunstreaker, the madder the Autobot got, making him fight harder, faster and more viciously then before.

The two thought they were wearing him down. Unbeknownst to the seekers, Sunstreaker was actually just getting more pissed off and determined the longer he was separated from his brother, and since they both had a similar form to the one who had "taken" Sideswipe he simply decided to take his rage out on them.

The black seeker landed a blow, shattering some pieces of armor off of Sunstreaker's side. That only served to anger Sunstreaker further. Making full use of colorful terminology as he acted, the gold mech grabbed the mech's arm, putting it in painful arm bar before ripping the limb out of its socket.

"Did you see that?" Blitzwing crowed. "He twisted his arm straight off!"

"That was awesome! I gotta learn how to do that!" Frenzy decided to give it a try.

"Ack! Not on me you dolt!" Rumble did not appreciate the effort.

It was like Super Bowl Night in the Nemesis. Or cage fight night. Or gladiatorial ring night. Well it was entertaining anyway. The Decepticons rarely had time to relax and enjoy something that they all agreed on. In a weird way, watching the Sunstreaker vs. Seekers death matches were pulling together the mechs into something that vaguely resembled camaraderie and a sense of calm.

What does _that_ tell you about the Decepticons?

Nonetheless, everyone was enjoying themselves.

Most everyone anyway.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Thundercracker growled looking away from the screen. "How can we watch our fellow Decepticons, no, our fellow seekers just get brutalized like that?"

"Easily. With energon snacks. Want one?" Never taking his optics off the screen, Skywarp waved an energon goody in Thundercracker's direction.

"This is your fault." Thundercracker seethed. "Our Seeker brethren are getting killed because you don't remember where you put his brother."

"Oh come on. It's one Autobot. If they can't take him on they probably deserve to die. We fight those two like every day, and we're still functioning. You even dropped _that one,_ " that one being Sunstreaker, "on his head yesterday."

' _I suppose I did',_ he sighed. Out of the corner of his optic he saw Sunstreaker run through the blue-black seeker with his energy blade and cringed. "Did you really kill his brother?"

Skywarp shrugged. "Probably. I've dropped Autobots from that height before and can't think of any that survived right off hand. In fact most of them explode on impact. It's pretty cool actually."

If Skywarp did indeed, kill one of the twins, Thundercracker guessed it must've been a fluke. It was just… Well Skywarp was an idiot. Given he _was_ a vicious idiot but still.

Skywarp was dangerous and Thundercracker was aware of this. In fact if he actually used his teleporting powers for something useful, Skywarp would be one of the biggest threats in the Decepticon army, more so then he already was. One day, Thundercracker contemplated, he might figure that out.

But no. Not even after actually using his power to dispose of one of the Autobots most skilled warriors was he aware of this. Because it had been a fluke. Because Skywarp had the IQ level of fly ash (and he was just as flighty).

One day it might occur to Skywarp that, "Hey! I'm pretty talented. Teleporting is a useful skill. Let's use some strategy!" Until then he would probably just use his ability to push Autobots (and Decepticons) down elevator shafts, or to teleport large rooms of elderly people having bingo night to the middle of the Arctic Circle (Which he tried last Labor Day).

"Last chance. Energon snack?"

Thundercracker swatted his hand away and glared.

"Alright. No energon snacks for you then." With that Skywarp turned his attention back at the screen.

Thundercracker quietly left his flighty trine mate, and he made his way through the jeering crowd to his leader.

So Skywarp didn't care about their fellow Seekers. That was understandable. Seekers weren't usually overly concerned with mechs outside their trine. And it wasn't that Thundercracker particularly liked any of the ones fighting Sunstreaker. He just felt somewhat loyal to them simply because they were birds a feather. They were beings of the same kind and that was enough to make him feel somewhat queasy about the whole situation.

He at least wanted to know why they were basically being sent to their doom. He'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if there was at least some kind of justification behind it all.

So he braced himself and asked.

"Lord Megatron," Thundercracker started in a respectful tone. "May I enquire as to what your plan is regarding this Autobot?"

He was trying to be discrete but somehow half of the room heard him. A good lot of them turned their attention from the monitors to see why Thundercracker was addressing their leader.

The Tyrant seemed to contemplate the question and a look crossed Megatron's face.

Thundercracker, to his horror, recognized that look.

That was Megatron's _recruiting_ face.

"It appears that this particular Autobot would actually make a decent addition to the Decepticon ranks. He is a warrior whose talents are wasted by Prime. We're merely wearing him down at the moment."

Thundercracker blanched.

Megatron smirked at his own genius. "I believe he will be an excellent credit to our forces, and since you two are already so familiar with each other from the battle field I'm sure it will take him no time to adjust."

' _I don't **want** to work with him! I already work with two homicidal maniacs that almost kill me on a daily basis with their stupidity!"_ Thundercracker screamed in his head.

Just a few days ago Skywarp pulled a dumb malicious prank on him. Him! Thundercracker! The guy he hated the least. At least it was a mild prank. All he did was remove the floor from his feet on the launch pad. It only took three days to recover from having his wings bent backwards from the fall…

Skywarp was sort of a jerk

But back to other more pressing matters; Thundercracker ignored his internal concerns and opted to use more tactful words out loud.

"Sir, what if he doesn't want to defect?" Thundercracker asked.

"He won't have choice in the matter. We'll simply take him down, forcefully reprogram him as we see fit, and make him a full-fledged Decepticon warrior whether he wants to be or not."

Many of the Decepticons who had been listening in where not sure how to take that news and shifted back and forth uncomfortably.

"Hey, everyone?" Frenzy spoke up. "I hate to break it to you all but the bat-shit insane car bot's not on the screen anymore."

He was right. All that was on the screen were the two smoking seeker corpses.

"What?" Megatron barked. "Where'd he go?"

At that note the door to the command room was blown out of its track by a powerful front kick, and there, in all of his homicidal glory stood Sunstreaker. He was dinged up, scratched up, splashed with energon which for the most part was not his, and the look in his optics was slightly more than a bit crazed.

Yet as fierce as he appeared to be, he was also looking tired. Obviously the seekers Megatron had thrown against him had done their jobs and wore the soldier down. There was no way that the yellow Autobot could put up much of a fight against the Decepticons now in the state he was in.

Megatron had been right, Thundercracker realized. The Autobot was strong but even Sunstreaker had his limits. He was in no condition to defend himself anymore. He would be captured, and he would be reprogrammed.

Megatron knew this and grinned. ' _I can just see the look that will be on Prime's insufferable face when he comes face to face with his own warrior on the battlefield.'_

"Give me," Sunstreaker huffed sounding a little worn down, "my brother back. Where is he?"

"Or what, Autobot?" Megatron played along, though he really didn't know where Sunstreaker's twin was. "You are not exactly in a position suitable enough to make demands of me or my forces. I don't think I'll tell you his location."

Sunstreaker totally did not call his bluff. That basically sealed the deal in his head that, yes, the Decepticons had his twin.

Lacking any negotiating leverage other than his brute strength and, his energon blade, Sunstreaker decided to once again fall back on the "I'm f-ing crazy! Don't mess with me" solution. "Then I'll just have to beat it out of you!"

"You are a fool if you think you'll survive the attempt, Autobot," Megatron's gaze hardened. "But there is one way you may make it out with your life intact. Cut all ties with your Autobot allies, and join the Decepticon cause."

"I don't want to hear you spewing your crap. I want my brother back."

"Fool. You seem to think you have a choice in the matter."

Sunstreaker was done speaking. He dropped his weight and charged at the nearest con.

This was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Even Sunstreaker probably knew in the back of his mind that he stood a snowballs chance in Maui against almost the entirety of the Decepticon forces in his battered condition. But at that moment he was not rational. At that moment all he saw was red. In his mind his brother, the thing dearest to him, was almost in reach, and the only thing preventing him from being with Sideswipe was the Decepticons.

In his head, though he was outgunned and outnumbered, it seemed completely logical to plow through the enemy if it meant getting his brother back.

Later, what happened next would be seen as an extremely lucky event that probably saved Sunstreaker's life. Yet even though it would end up being the thing that prevented Sunstreaker from getting killed by a hoard of Decepticons, it didn't feel so lucky at the time.

Just before he punched a hole through Ramjet his rescue party decided to make themselves evident. Like a mockery of angels dropping in from the heavens the five Aerialbots crashed through the ceiling and wouldn't you know it, one of them dropped right on top of Sunstreaker driving him into the ground.

It stopped the gold mech's suicidal rampage before it began, but it also gave him a bit of a concussion.

It was good that the Decepticon command center was actually above water at the moment or they all would've been waterlogged. Instead they were merely stuck with a new Sunroof.

"Sunstreaker! We're here to save…ya." Silverbolt looked around wildly, not seeing the golden mech.

There was just a crowd of angry and bewildered Decepticons circling them.

"I could've sworn this is where Sunstreaker's signal was. Are you sure this was right?" Silverbolt asked Skydive.

The amateur strategist looked a little concerned. "I think something went wrong. We weren't supposed to end up in their command center! These were supposed to be the barracks!"

"Yeah, I'm not seeing gold curmudgeon anywhere," Air Raid growled.

"Hey, Air Raid." Firelight started slowly.

"What?"

"Look down."

He did so and found that he was standing on top of the mech they were supposed to be rescuing.

"Oh frak." Air Raid cringed and hopped off the Lambo's back. Slingshot let out a loud guffaw.

Sunstreaker remained sprawled unmoving on the ground.

"I think we just killed Sunstreaker." Air Raid said quietly, the fear of Ratchet blossoming in the pit of his intakes.

"Dude. What do you mean we?" Slingshot raised an eye ridge.

Sunstreaker groaned.

There were some sighs of relief and some sighs of disappointment. From both sides.

"Never mind! False alarm. He's not dead." Fireflight declared to the rest as if they couldn't figure it out for themselves.

Sunstreaker whimpered and shakily started to get up.

It was at that moment that the second entourage burst forth from the walls. A giant white shuttle touched down and opened its doors. Prime, Gears, Bluestreak, Ratchet and Inferno charged from Skyfire, guns ready to be blazing.

And they bowled right over Sunstreaker just as the mech was trying to get up.

Prime, standing as tall and imposing as he could, pointed a finger heroically at the enemy leader. "Megatron!" his voice boomed. "Where are my soldiers?!"

Megatron wasn't looking at Prime. Instead he was rather fixated on Prime's feet. "It would appear that you are standing on one of them."

Prime blinked an excruciatingly slow blink and looked down. Poor Sunstreaker's Face was being driven into the floor by one of Prime's peds.

"Prime! Get your god damn goliath sized self off of him!" Ratchet shrieked. He looked poised to shove his commanding officer off the warrior.

There was no need. Optimus jumped back like he had been burned. "Oh. Um, is he all right Ratchet?"

Ratchet pulled Sunstreaker back toward the Autobot's side of the skirmish and flipped him over. It was a good thing he was built tough to break or Prime's weight would've cracked him like an egg. However, even though Sunstreaker was awake he was dazed and confused. The lights were on but nobody was home.

"Other then you smashing him into paste? I wouldn't know!" The medic snapped. "Great job everyone. What an excellent rescue mission this is turning out to be."

And then Optimus stood there looking less heroic by the minute and more and more like an admonished child who was playing too rough with the other kids.

At least half of the Decepticons in the crowd absolutely lost it, and fell into hysterics.

Even Megatron let a wolfish grin spread across his face. "It appears that this would be the day we all learned who really is in charge of you Autobots. It's to be expected though that one as weak willed as Prime would not be able to keep his soldier's in line."

That snapped Prime back into shape. He quickly made himself imposing again and was going to speak but Ratchet, who was still perched over Sunstreaker like an angry (bloodthirsty) hen protecting her nest, beat him to it.

"You shut the hell up you silt sucking waste of creation," Ratchet snarled. "I am not in the frame of mind to be dealing with your shit today!"

Several Autobot jaws were scraping the floor at that point. The Decepticons were stunned into silence.

Acid Storm broke said silence, "Did you really just speak to Lord Megatron like-"

"Yes I did you Bot fraggin son of a lime. You shut that yapper of yours before I beat it off with your wings. Know what it feels like to get them bent backwards?"

Thundercracker sighed from aside. He did.

Acid Storm bowed out gracefully to the back of the room.

Almost every Decepticon in the room was taller than Ratchet. Apparently though, being very loud and very intimidating gave you the illusion of height because a good third of them were cowering under the medic's fury.

"And you!" Ratchet pulled Sunstreaker up into a sitting position by the shoulders and started violently shaking him. Sunstreaker's head snapped back and forth, but he was still, for the most part, completely dazed from the head trauma he had just endured. "I leave you alone for a couple slaggin' hours in the medical bay while you're injured and unconscious and when I turn around what do I find? That you attacked the Primus frakkin' Decepticons on your own! Does your stupidity know no bounds?! I should leave you for spare parts! Maybe make something useful like a Primus damned door bolt to keep idiots like you inside!"

Ratchet let go and Sunstreaker slumped back to the floor looking more mystified then he had before.

Scrapper began to clap in appreciation at the display. No one else cared to join in.

"How do you deal with that Prime?" Megatron asked earnestly.

Prime sulked. "We manage."

"Irregardless, I have had enough of this. Acid Storm! While he's incapacitated, get the Autobot!"

"What?" Acid Storm squeaked from the back. "Sir! I don't believe irregardless is a word!"

Megatron gave him a scornful look and that kicked his self preservation instincts into full gear. Following the order he charged at where Sunstreaker was lying behind Ratchet. Bluestreak saw this and threw the entirety of his weight against the seeker to send him off course.

"OW! What the frack did I burn myself on?" Bluestreak went reeling in the opposite directing, the paint on his side looking a little singed.

"Well?" Megatron roared. "What are the rest of you fools waiting for! Attack!"

A flood of Decepticons surged toward the severely outnumbered Autobots.

Fist flew, guns blazed, and many of the bots were not beneath shin kicking and biting.

Megatron strode confidently through the fray. "Well it looks like it's just you and me Prime."

"It's the same old story over and over again Megatron." Prime dropped into an aggressive stance.

"Ah, but let's see if we can finally get an end to this age old tale. One ending in your demise! And then your soldier will be ours."

"What do you want with Sunstreaker?" Prime didn't move from his position. Instead he was intent on waiting for his enemy to make the first move.

"Seriously," Gears called out from under a Constructicon dog pile. "Why do you want him?"

Something occurred to Prime at that moment. He blinked. 'There is **no** way.' That couldn't be it…

"His talents are being wasted by those who do not know how to control his power. He is unfit for your command, Prime. He deserves to be ruled by his own kind."

Optimus actually froze. He recognized that face. That was Megatron's recruiting face.

Oh hell no.

"MEGATRON!" Prime bellowed in frustration. "You have 18 sociopaths already! Let me keep my **one**!" and with that the two leaders started to grapple hand to hand.

As for the rest of the battle it was pretty chaotic.

"Well I'm not sure this rescue plan is working!" Air Raid yelled to his teammates while forcing one of the Constructicons into a full Nelson.

"If at first you don't succeed," Gears started sagely. "Give up. There's no point in being a damn fool."

"We brought you why again?" Inferno sneered at the Minibot, before getting beamed in the face by a wayward fist. "Gah! Bluestreak?"

"Sorry! I thought you were Thrust!"

"What? How in the Sam hell did you mistake me fer Thrust?!"

"I'm a SNIPER!" Bluestreak wailed. "I suck at hand to hand!"

"Then snipe for Primus's sake!"

"Ow!" Swindle cried as a bolt clipped him in the chest. "Primus, BRAWL! I'm on your side!"

"Oh," came a soft voice. "I didn't realize it was you."

"Like the inferno you didn't. YOU WERE STARING RIGHT AT ME! OW! You did it again!"

"I swear, it was an accident."

Insults were exchanged. Egos and chassis' were bruised. And at some point Slingshot was slammed into the monitor the Decepticons had been watching Sunstreaker on. It exploded into a shower of golden sparks and glass around the Aerialbot.

He had been sent sprawling from a particularly straight and true punch from… Somebody. He didn't see who got the hit in. It was probably Drag Strip. It was always Dragstrip.

With a wild war cry, he pushed himself off of the keyboard panel of the monitor, accidentally punching several random keys while doing so.

No one noticed that in crisp Cybertronian the words "Solitary confinement chamber: unlocked" flashed across the screen.

Several decks below the brawl to end all brawls a cell chamber opened. A very angry, very bright yellow seeker emerged from the depths, lighting the dark hall with his righteous fire.

* * *

Meanwhile, not at the Decepticon base, Sideswipe was waking up again.

Sideswipe was getting pissed off. More so then he had been.

He didn't even remember falling into recharge. That meant his reserves were so low, his body was basically shutting down on a whim.

He was passing out. It was a good thing it didn't happen somewhere dangerous. Last he remembered he was doing some off road driving.

At least he was in Oregon now. So close to home and yet so far. He never thought he'd ever miss the Ark in as much as he did.

Oh, he was feeling awful. He hurt all over, there were brambles in places he didn't know existed and he was so exhausted he felt as though he could melt into the ground.

He was about to rev up his engines to leave but then something wasn't quite right.

He was in some old abandoned parking lot. Somewhere he was certain he had not been before.

That and Sideswipe noticed that the temperature was increasing inside of him.

What? That was rather odd. He ran a scan….

Holy Primus! There were humans inside of him! Again! How'd they keep doing that? And they were -

Wait. What were the squishies doing…?

'WHAT THE SLAG?!' Sideswipe internally screamed in horror and disgust. He gunned his engines, and his tires began to squeal horribly against the pavement before they finally got some purchase and Sideswipe shot down the road in reverse. The human teenagers jolted apart in surprise and fear.

"What the hell are you pink flesh bags doing? Stop mating in me! GAH! Get out! Get OUT!" Sideswipe shrieked and slammed on the breaks. Both occupants of his front seat jumped with a start at the sudden screaming and were almost flung through the windshield. The girl began to shriek and cry while the boy simple tried to hang on to anything for dear life.

"Damnit! No fleshy fluid swapping! EW, GET OUT!" He flung his doors open and rattled his body violently, ending up almost on just two tires, causing the two confused teenagers to drop out.

Sideswipe didn't even bother closing his door as he revved his engines and pealed out leaving the two dazed humans in the dirt.

After five minutes of driving he slowed and stopped. He transformed and stood in the middle of the road. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, thoroughly traumatized by his ordeal.

"Oh Primus, I feel so violated."

And there he stood in the middle of the empty road trying to collect himself.

He stood.

And he stood.

And then he transformed and drove back.

The two teenagers were exactly where he left them, both too stunned to move. The girl was ashen and shaking while the boy was fruitlessly trying to console her. They didn't even realize that the red Lambo that had screamed at them and drove away had come back. Until it was too late.

"Oh my GOD! That car is possessed!" The teen male screamed in horror. He totally ditched his girl and began to flee. Sideswipe transformed and blocked off his escape.

The rants began.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" Sideswipe screamed in anguish and disgust. For the first time Sideswipe was seeing humans as his brother usually did: As vile disgusting creatures

"W-we didn't know you were an Autobot!"

"WAS THE GIANT AUTOBOT SYMBOL ON MY HOOD NOT ENOUGH?!"

"I don't know! I- we thought it was some kind of car decal! They're popular!"

"Why the frak would you put faction symbols on your cars! Do you realize all that does is make you organics targets! WHY! Why are you all so stupid?!"

"I-I'm sorry!" The boy wailed. "We didn't even get that far before-"

Sideswipe slammed his hands over his audios. "LALALA! I'm not listening to this!"

"Well what do you want me to say? We're so sorry!" The boy screamed back. The girl was now in complete hysterics.

The conflicting emotions of rage, confrontation, disgust, and the urge to flee left Sideswipe a rattling, arm-waving mess. With his thoughts too convoluted for anything coherent, Sideswipe simply let out a frustrated cry to the heavens, transformed, and swerved away at speeds not legal anywhere except at the Autobahn.

 

* * *

Ratchet did his best to pull Sunstreaker out of the line of fire but it was proving to be difficult. Why were the twins so darn tall and cumbersome?

He would've tried to get Sunstreaker on Skyfire but the large white mech was too busy contending with at least half of the Combaticons.

"Come on. Wake up Sunstreaker," he pleaded futile to the catatonic bot. Sunstreaker didn't reply.

"And where do you think you're going?"

Ratchet froze.

It was Megatron. For reasons unknown he was no longer battling Prime. The Autobot leader was struggling to get back over to where Ratchet was and was literally shoving his way through the battle, but there was a lot to go through.

"Don't think that I've forgotten about you," Megatron scoffed.

Ratchet growled, giving no signs of being intimidated.

"You may as well hand him over now, Medic. It'll save you the pathetic effort."

"Stay away from them, Megatron!" Optimus called, still wading his way through the battle.

"I won't repeat myself again. Hand him over."

Ratchet did not know why Megatron wanted Sunstreaker nor did he really care. It wasn't gonna happen.

"Like hell I will," Ratchet put himself between Sunstreaker and the Malevolent Leader. "After all the effort I've put into fixing this moron you think I'm just going to hand him over and into your greasy clutches? But while we're on the subject you seem to have something of ours."

Megatron oddly enough took the Autobot's insults in stride and in fact had a glint of evil mirth in his eye. "Well it appears like we found a spineless Autobot worm that does indeed have a spine after all. But I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't play cute with me. Where's my red idiot?"

Megatron looked honestly bewildered by that. "What?"

"My. Red. Idiot." Ratchet enunciated slowly by loudly.

The fighting around them seemed to slow to a stop as Autobots and Decepticons alike watched with a morbid fascination at the verbal match, Medic vs. Dictator.

"You will have to be clearer Autobot. There are many red idiots amongst you."

Ratchet fumed. "My Idiot. My fool. My twit. My Jackass foul up. The red clod I've put together more times than all of you combined. Where is Sideswipe?"

"That's it!" Skywarp threw his hands in the air. "This is the second time this has happened. First the yellow nuisance then all of you! Why does everyone think we took his brother hostage?"

"Everyone thinks you took his brother hostage," Thundercracker corrected.

"Huh? Wait?" Bluestreak actually lowered his gun slightly and vocalized the question bubbling up amongst the Autobot. "You guys don't have Sideswipe?"

"I didn't take him hostage! Why the hell would I take an Autobot hostage! That's not nearly as fun as dropping them from extreme heights," Skywarp gesticulated wildly to emphasize his point.

The Autobots blanched. Ratchet looked Crestfallen.

"Megatron. What have you done?" Prime asked trying to keep the horror of what he was hearing out of his voice.

"It's not what I did, Prime. It would just so happen that one of my seekers decided to be useful. The end result is the same, however. Prime, your soldier is dead."

Shock filled Prime's system. "What?"

"He is lying in pieces somewhere in the desert. Congratulations, Prime. Not only were you unable to keep one of your best and brightest from being killed, you will also lose his brother to our side."

It was horrible. It was tragic. It was a devastating blow to the Autobot's forces.

Ratchet was so glad that Sunstreaker hadn't been aware of anything that had gone on the past several minutes. He would be devastated and heartbroken. He dreaded the mech recovering from those blows to the head. He wasn't sure he'd be able to handle the news.

Before the Decepticons could take advantage of the Autobots sudden drop in defense the drama and sorrow of the situation was completely wrecked as a voice boomed through the room, " **I shall smite ye where thee stands**!"

A blinding light appeared at the door Sunstreaker had kicked down earlier. Things were a lot hotter suddenly too.

Megatron closed his optics and let out an exasperated hiss. He didn't even need to look to see who ruined the moment. "Oh for the love of… who let Sunstorm out!?"

Silence.

"He's real?" A voice from the back called out.

"Ha! I called it! The betting pool is mine!" was the only response given.

"Shut up, Swindle."

"He's on fire. Was he always on fire? I honestly don't remember him being on fire."

This needed to be nipped in the bud.

"Acid Wash!" Megatron roared.

Somehow the garishly green seeker managed to make his way unnoticed through the crowd and was instantly by his commander's side. "Sir, I'm Acid Storm."

He was given a withering look.

"But, uh, you can call me whatever you like, Sir."

"Get him to shut the God fire off. The last thing we need is for our underwater base to catch on fire. Again."

Acid storm blinked owlishly at his leader.

"No disrespect or anything, Lord Megatron, but what do you expect me to able to do? He's not in my trine. I have as much sway with him as Dirge has with Mixmaster."

"You're both radioactive. Figure something out."

"Actually, Sir, I'm not radioactive. I'm highly acidic-"

"GO!"

Acid Storm made a hasty retreat, wondering why oh why did his leader choose to acknowledge his existence so much this of all days.

"Hey, uh, Prime?" Inferno spoke up, breaking the Autobots out of their funk. "While they're distracted should we, ya know, get our tails outa here?"

"That is an excellent idea, Inferno. Now if you and Bluestreak would grab Sunstreaker please."

"Gotcha, Prime."

The Autobots quietly snuck out of the hole they made earlier on Skyfire while Acid Storm made a pitiful attempt at placating Sunstorm. It wasn't really working and the bright yellow seeker started to throw big wads of fire at everyone.

Acid Storm sighed, as he ducked from a fireball and narrowly avoided getting his face burned off.

If at first you don't succeed, well…darn


	5. Déjà vu

Sideswipe really wanted to cry.

It seemed to work well for humans when they wanted to purge emotions of frustration and agony and he wondered vaguely if Wheeljack would go for installing tear ducts in his optics. Of course with his luck his optics would end up exploding after such a procedure. Actually letting Wheeljack anywhere near his person would probably be a bad idea. (Like the time he was assigned to help Wheeljack as a lab assistant as some weird form of punishment. Thermite had been involved. Prowl and Wheeljack got a verbal whipping courtesy of a livid Ratchet at some point along the way. It was a long story.)

Still Sideswipe was at his breaking point. He was agitated, injured, and pushed beyond the limits of sanity; more so than any Cybertronian should've had to endure. He just wanted to go home. He missed his brother. His missed the other Autobots. Hell, even Gears would be a welcome face.

Honestly it couldn't get much worse.

The universe had an odd sense of comedic timing because at that moment the sky was split with a crack of lightening and it began to rain.

Sideswipe just gawked at the sky. There was just _no way_. That was just way too clichéd; way too hokey even for his cornball existence as an Autobot, and that way saying something.

 _Really._ _Rain._ Just as he thought he couldn't feel more dejected then he already was.

"Well," Sideswipe started rather caustically, addressing the unseen cosmos that was the universe with a dark undertone in his voice. "This is just getting plain ridiculous. How did (what should've been) a short road trip turn into all of this? Is this some sort of karmic volley because of something I did in a past life? Was I an underling of Unicron? Did I eat puppies? What did I do to deserve this?"

It just rained harder.

Frankly it shouldn't have surprised him all that much that it was raining given the location. The state of Oregon wasn't exactly known for its sunny disposition. In fact, there seemed to be a perpetual overcast. Unfortunately, his mind was starting to wander down the dangerous path of Red Alert rationality. The still sane part of his psyche was a little worried about how reasonable everything the Security Director had said in the past about conspiracies and paranoia was at that moment. That yes; the universe was indeed out to get them. Or at least it had a vendetta against Sideswipe for some reason.

"Alright. I get it. Obviously Primus is trying to send me some kind of signal in the form of an endless supply of fleshy antagonism and a nice, soggy rain storm to top it all off," Sideswipe spoke to the sky with a strained laugh. "I've got to say the crappy weather is lacking in imagination though. Why not just drop a meteor on my head and be done with it? Honestly at least it gives me bragging rights. Death by human induced trauma? That sounds pretty lame. Taken out by a fireball dropping out of the sky? _Awesome._ Grimlock would be jealous."

Suddenly the area was very, very gray, as if the rain washed away all of the color. As Sideswipe stood in the torrential downpour observing the suddenly black and white world around him he began to contemplate and wonder when exactly his life turned into a film noir.

Maybe not film noir. Maybe really bad daytime TV.

He plopped on the muddy ground in a half lotus and rested his face in his palm. He was purposefully ignoring the fact that he was sitting about twenty feet from the side of the highway and that several people were slowing their vehicles as they passed him. They were trying to discern whether or not he was really an Autobot or some weird promotional stunt for the recently opened car dealer just down the road.

He was beyond caring about his appearance at this point, something that would be blasphemous to Sunstreaker. Instead he was pathetically trying to rationalize where he was and how he had gotten to this point.

His mind buzzed in rewind, zipping past the hell that had been his existence for the last 48 hours and suddenly paused as soon as the memory of his battle with Skywarp popped up.

Skywarp.

This was all Skywarp's fault. Skywarp and his stupid teleporting.

Sideswipe vaguely remembered overhearing a conversation back at the Ark. Some mechs had been stringing together the similarities between the black and purple seeker and Sideswipe. They were talking about how, from what they heard, Skywarp was a bit of a prankster himself and was known to be laidback about things, enjoying himself a good time, not unlike Sideswipe. One of the alleged Autobots involved in the conversation even had the gall to joke that if there hadn't been a war Sideswipe and Skywarp probably would've been friends. Ya know, given the likeness of the two's personalities.

They were wrong. So very, very wrong. It was incomprehensible the level of their wrongness. That's how off the mark they had been.

The simple truth was that even if there was no war Sideswipe couldn't see himself as Skywarp's friend. It just didn't compute for him. In fact, in hindsight Sideswipe should've been angrier about the baseless speculations regarding himself and the idiot jet. There were absolutely _no_ similarities between them. None whatsoever. For starters Skywarp was a complete and utter moron. He made Sludge look smart (Well, maybe that wasn't completely true but still). Second, even though Sideswipe did pull the occasional (keyword being occasional) joke on his comrades, they were in good fun. From what he heard Skywarp's pranks were borderline first degree murder half the time. Cripes, he put the "fun" in fundamental homicide.

And the more he thought about it the angrier he got. He had the sudden urge to punch whoever had said the two could be friends in the teeth. Because they had been wrong. Severely, devastatingly _wrong._

**Wrong**

Because at that moment Sideswipe never hated anyone as much as he hated Skywarp. Because if Skywarp hadn't been a malicious idiot, if he hadn't teleported him to Gods know where, he'd probably be back at his base giving his brother a hard time as the brotherly code ordained.

He conveniently wasn't acknowledging the fact that he had technically started the fight with his jet judo. It was common knowledge that that wasn't exactly the most mature way to go into battle.

It was his moping party and he could blame who he wanted to.

The jet should've faced him like a real mech! Not teleport him away hoping the problem would disappear. Stupid son of a Cessna. Stupid teleporting.

"Stupid Skywarp."

A crack of lightening punctuated his remark.

He made a list in his head. It was labeled "things I need to do when I get back". The top priorities were the following:

**1\. Hug Sunstreaker**

**2\. Take a shower**

**3\. Sleep. Sleep forever**

**4\. Get repaired**

**5\. Fix jetpack**

**6\. Kill Skywarp until he's dead. Rinse, repeat.**

Not necessarily in that order.

But he wouldn't be able to accomplish any of that until he actually got himself back to the Ark. He couldn't give up now. He was so close.

In fact, thinking about all of that gave him a second wind, a second burst of energy. Theoretically anyway since technically he was only at a twelve percent total energy capacity. Also his systems were starting to overheat so much that most of the raindrops that hit his armor evaporated into steam on contact with a sizzle.

Still with his newfound motivation and delirium he transformed and made his way back to the road.

But in his brand new haste to get back he probably broke the speed limit by 20 mph.

* * *

 

No one in Skyfire felt like talking.

It just wasn't sinking in very well. Sideswipe? Dead? It didn't compute. The young mech had just been so full of life, so sure of himself in battle. He had always been a mech who was approachable but untouchable.

Hearing that he had been destroyed by Skywarp of all mechs? It was devastating to Ratchet. It was like the universe imploded around him. There was no sense in it. Because it had been Sideswipe.

Sideswipe. The most enduring of his patients. To know that he would never again work on the young soldier, to know that he would never fix damaged components while they both volleyed banter off each other, it just didn't make sense.

And so Ratchet fixated himself on the living twin if just so he wouldn't have to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.

Sunstreaker was still completely catatonic. On some level it seemed like he was awake but he just didn't comprehend what was going on around him. It was like he was completely detached from reality. Then again he had only had his head bashed in like three times in the last forty eight hours so it was somewhat expected.

A selfish part of Ratchet hoped he just wouldn't wake up. He didn't have the heart to tell Sunstreaker the fate of his brother. It would absolutely crush the golden twin.

It was crushing the medic.

Ratchet didn't have to think more on it. He and everyone else in the shuttle slammed into a wall as Skyfire violently flipped to his side. The jet wobbled before he could right himself again.

There was chaos, cursing and some grumbling from Gears.

Prime tried untangling himself from the bottom of the Autobot pile. "Skyfire! What's going on?"

There was another impact that almost caused Skyfire to nosedive.

"They followed us! I'm taking fire! Real fire!" Skyfire rattled again as he was hit."Whatever it was got my thrusters! I have to land."

And so he did. With the grace of an earthquake. but everyone made it out in one piece. They landed in the mountainous desert only miles away from Portland.

Ratchet and Inferno were the last to leave dragging Sunstreaker out before Skyfire transformed. The large jet winced as he did so. He was covered in several burns. He was a sturdy mech but whatever had attacked did quite some damage.

"Autobots! Take cover!" Optimus ordered. They didn't need to be told twice.

The Aerialbots, deciding that flying was probably not the best of options at the moment hastily landed and dove for cover with their teammates.

Ratchet made sure to stay close to Sunstreaker, given that the zonked out warrior was in no condition to defend himself. He scanned the sky.

Skywarp and Thundercracker were present, as was a strangely bright green seeker. However none of them were paying much attention to the Autobots . Their attention was rather focused on…

…the ball of fire in the sky.

Ok. Upon further inspection Ratchet realized that it wasn't a ball of fire. It was a _seeker_ on fire. Only the seeker seemed to be totally with cool with being a living Zippo, and not at all in agonizing burning pain. Ya know, as one would usually be when on fire.

Skywarp, the mech Ratchet hated more than anything else at that given moment, appeared to be cautiously addressing the burning seeker. "Hey, Sunstorm. Nice Sunstorm. You want an energon snack? I'll give you an energon snack if you come back to base with us. Doesn't that sound like a great idea?"

Apparently it did not. Sunstorm as he was now designated responded by hurling a giant wad of fire at Skywarp. The black jet teleported away from it and reappeared next to Thundercracker.

"Jeez. Why are you all hating on energon snacks today?"

From what Ratchet had observed in the past, Thundercracker was probably the most soft spoken and rationale of the Decepticons.

At the moment he looked like he wanted to wring Skywarp's neck. "Skywarp, just stop! You'll just piss him off more!"

"Well do you have any ideas, oh great and wise Cracker of Thunder?" He gesticulated at the fiery mech. "How do you plan to get him back! He's insane!"

"Not by treating him like a dog! Does he look like a dog to you?"

"I know he's not a dog! He doesn't have scales!"

Thundercracker looked at his companion with complete horror. "Primus, there is just no way you're that stupid, Skywarp. Please tell me you're not that stupid. I _need_ to know this."

"Um, can we not argue right now?" Acid Storm was looking distressed. This was reasonable since Sunstorm was lobbing balls of fire at _him_ now, instead of at the Autobots he had been chasing. His fellow seekers ignored him and continued to squabble.

"ENOUGH!" Sunstorm's deep voice boomed. "I've had had enough of such pathetic wretches as yourselves! You dare stand in the way of Primus' divine will? Then you will be struck down with a terrible vengeance! Your souls shall burn for eternity!"

"Hey, Creamsicle!" Skywarp turned on the seeker. "Could you wait a second? My buddy and I are having words."

"You know what a creamsicle is," Thundercracker grated slowly, "But you don't know what a dog is!"

"Why does it matter? All organics look the same anyways! On the inside at least."

Ratchet watched as Acid Storm wiped his hand down his face and then covered his optics with a sigh. He seemed to be contemplating whether or not it was too late to join the Autobots.

"And you!"

That jolted Ratchet and all of the others. Suddenly Sunstorm was addressing the Autobots. "Inferior, defective ground dwellers such as yourselves don't deserve to be in the sanctity of the great creator's embrace! It is the will of Primus that you all be incinerated before his righteous gaze!"

Prime stared. And he stared. And he wondered why Megatron was so set on Sunstreaker. Because it appeared that the war lord already had a homicidal, yellow lunatic of his own. Why would he need Prime's? This mech was one fry short of a happy meal, it should've been more than enough to deal with.

Nobody else seemed to be having any luck rationalizing the lunacy that was before them.

"Oh, Primus. Is he serious?" Air Raid asked flatly. "Is anyone else not able to take this seriously right now?"

It was like someone threw lighter fluid on the yellow Seeker because his righteous fire exploded in size. "How dare you use the great almighty creator's name in vain!" he roared, holy vengeance in his voice.

"Way to go Raid." Slingshot glared at his gestalt mate. "Way to flipping go. You made the pilot light madder."

Air Raid eyed the mech. "I could take him."

"You will all _burn_ for your blasphemy!"

And that's when it started raining fire. Air Raid was decidedly eating his words.

"…and as it were a great mountain, raging with fire, it arose from the sea!" Sunstorm snarled as he pitched a particularly big ball of consecrated fire toward the Aerialbots.

It was difficult to tell if the estranged yellow seeker was just babbling and quoting random snippets of scripture, or if he was actually referring to himself.

Meanwhile, Skywarp was watching the Autobots scramble for cover in glee. Thundercracker watched with a listless boredom. Acid Storm was contemplating giving Megatron his two weeks' notice.

"Well," Thundercracker began apathetically. "Maybe he'll tire himself out at least."

"Is anyone else really, really, reeeellly wishing Trailbreaker was here right now? I could use a good force field right about now!" Bluestreak yelped and dove away, narrowly avoiding being incinerated by radioactive, holy fire.

"Well he's not here so it doesn't matter. I knew I shouldn't have gone on this trip. Being melted into slag is on my top three list of how I didn't want to go," Gears grumbled standing with his arms folded. Miraculously he wasn't being hit by any fire.

"Could someone just shoot that crackpot firebug out of the sky already?" Inferno roared.

"I'm trying! I'm trying!" And Bluestreak was but he could never be in the same spot long enough to get a good shot before he was fleeing for his life.

It was like they were being assaulted be a meteor shower. A holy, crazy meteor shower.

"Silence!" Sunstorm's fire flared. "Foolish mortals such as yourselves could not even fathom the depths that Primus's will flows through me! You will never escape my wrath!"

"Pfft. Yeah." Inferno scoffed. "He's about as deep as a dried puddle in the desert."

That seemed to make the seeker even angrier than he had been.

Ratchet really wished his comrades knew how to shut up sometimes.

* * *

Soooo Sideswipe was running away from the police.

He was doing it in the most literal sense of the term too. He was actually on two legs, fleeing from a swarm of cop cars that were dodging traffic behind him.

Because when he had been simply driving away from the police he hadn't counted on them placing a spike strip on the highway.

At least it wasn't raining anymore.

His tires were blown out and he almost fishtailed into a ditch but he had managed to transform and the chase was being taken on foot.

Apparently the evil blob lady from the impound lot had put out a notice and a warrant for his arrest. Since there weren't many bright red Lamborghini Countach's with large Autobot symbols on their hoods driving around. They had found him pretty easily.

For being a robot in disguise, he was pretty bad at the whole disguise part.

In his hysteria to get back to base he hadn't even noticed that the fuzz had been hot on his trail for several miles

You know, until he actually hit the spike strip.

So he swerved, transformed, righted himself and kept on running. He had a one track mind now. Get back. Get back. That was the mantra in his head. Usually he wouldn't have allowed himself to get caught in this situation. Usually he was too clever and fast but he was at his wit's end. His energy was low, and rationality was leaving him. In his mind, as irrational as it sounded, he believed that if he was caught by the police and put back in that impound lot he'd never get back to the Ark.

From the corner of his optics he saw a highway sign that said he was in Salem Oregon.

He was so close. So close. All he need was an extra hour or so and he'd be on the home stretch. He was so close to Portland he could almost taste the Voodoo Donuts.

There was a road block ahead. Sideswipe growled and picked up speed. These police officers were the last thing standing between him and his base. He coiled and jumped clearing the blockade like a hurdle.

It was at that moment his systems decided to fritz. Midair he completely blanked long enough to forget completely about his landing. He crashed and rolled across the asphalt. Several police officers yelped and dove for cover as the large red mech tumbled across the road. The impact was so jarring that Sideswipe's broken jetpack was literally ripped out of subspace and went sprawling with its owner. They both stopped several yards away from the cops.

Sideswipe was face down and he did not feel like getting up any time soon. He wanted to bury his head in the sand like an ostrich. If he couldn't see them then they couldn't see him right?

Blearily he peaked up. Nope, all the officers were staring at him terrified with weapons raised.

He got on his forearms, then on his knees. Weakly, with little energy left he fell back into a sit.

"Autobot!" one of the humans spoke. He had more pins on his jacket then the other fellows. He was probably the one with the highest rank.

Sideswipe looked at the head cop dude blankly, and fixed his broken jetpack to his back so he'd have free use of his arms.

"Why didn't you pull over?"

"Well," Sideswipe began with an odd sense of calm, and a bizarrely rational tone in his voice, "I didn't know you wanted me to."

The cop sputtered. "You were running away!"

"Well I obviously couldn't drive anymore what with that spike strip and all. I really need to get back to my base. Like really. Like _now_ ," He insisted.

"We did that so you would stop. Do you know how fast you were going?"

"Nope," he said indifferently, "Ya see, my speedometer went offline hours ago. To conserve energy. I sort of have to guess now. I suppose I was off."

"You were going twenty five miles over the speed limit."

"Well now I know. And knowing is half the battle. Can I go now?"

The police officer was going to respond but he was cut off by something that sounded a lot like a car backfiring. The loud pop jolted Sideswipe and several cops hit the deck thinking it was a gun shot.

"Lay down your arms!" the officer's voice was an octave higher than it probably usually was.

"I don't have any!" Sideswipe yelled back and then paused because he remembered that he actually did have weapons on him. In fact, he had a _lot_ of weapons on him. However he didn't have much time to ponder the devastation that could be caused by his hidden arsenal because there was another even louder pop. This time Sideswipe felt heat run down his back.

Sideswipe careened his head back to take a look at what was happening back there and to his horror found that the jetpack he had just fixed to his back was starting to smoke from its thrusters.

"You have got to be kidding me."

It had been rendered offline by both energy drain and Sideswipe's spectacular dive into the desert. It apparently wasn't as dead as he thought and in fact recharged much of its battery power.

Almost in the exact same way his jet pack had died, there was a snap, a crackle, and a pop, and it began to rattle to life.

Sideswipe was getting an odd sense of Déjà vu.

Even though the jet pack was no longer broken, it was still, well, broken. Just because it was no longer offline, didn't necessarily mean that it was working as should be. So to Sideswipe's horror not only was the once dead contraption roaring to life, not only was fire bursting from the thrusters, it was doing all of this despite the fact that he had not activated it.

Sideswipe felt himself get slowly dragged across the pavement as his jetpack charged and gained purchase.

"Frag me," Sideswipe muttered dryly.

The jetpack exploded to life and Sideswipe was sent hurtling backwards and away from the police at a bone-shatteringly fast speed.

It was a good thing he didn't have bones.

* * *

 

Bluestreak paused in his task of trying to riddle Sunstorm with bullet holes long enough to say, "Did I just hear a sonic boom?"

Various mechs paused and listened. Even Sunstorm temporarily halted his fiery reign of terror. A deep guttural noise reverberated in the distance. Pebbles and loose dirt on the ground vibrated briefly. As soon as it happened it stopped.

Several sets of optics went to Thundercracker.

"It wasn't me." The jet shrugged.

A dark speck silhouetted against the bright afternoon sky appeared on the horizon miles away. It was fast approaching this speck and upon closer inspection you could see a halo of light back dropping the object.

The closer this high-speed, sporadically flying object hurtled toward the warring factions the more noticeable the noise it was making became. It sounded vaguely like a single jet turbine working over time, and somebody screaming in terror.

Sunstorm paused his ranting and squinted at the object wonder what in the name a Primus it was.

It was going faster than he had previously guessed because in almost an instant the object plowed right into him knocking the seeker clear out of the sky.

There was an explosion and cataclysmic confetti rained on earth. Sunstorm and the object hit the dirt at a high velocity. A mushroom cloud of desert dust swirled and erupted from the point of impact.

The Autobots stared dumbly at the powder wondering what in the name of Primus just happened there.

With bated breath they watched as the dust slowly cleared. The silhouette of a mech shakily getting to a stand was visible through the haze.

The mech was not Sunstorm.

It was Sideswipe.

It was Sideswipe who came out relatively unscathed from the high speed collision. Sunstorm on the other hand was off to the side unconscious and smoldering like a radioactive campfire. They were in the desert so his fire wasn't spreading anywhere. The sand under him was turning into glass though.

Meanwhile, Sideswipe stared blandly at his fellow Autobots. There was no wide grin on his face or a contagious laugh in his voice. He made no witty or sarcastic quips, or joking remarks.

In fact he looked downright _awful._

If you told a passerby that Sideswipe was a red and white mech they probably wouldn't believe you. He was caked with so much mud, soot and sand that it looked like he was wearing desert army camouflage. His armor was ripped up and scratched, particularly around the bottoms of his shin guards. Shrubs, brambles and other kinds of pointy, dry desert foliage were crammed in every crevice and cranny he had. Golden and blue sparks were raining intermittently from various joints, and junctions in his body. There appeared to be a nervous twitch causing his left optic to jump slightly every so often.

He looked to be a fortune cookie short of a Chinese dinner.

But the Autobots, and the seekers (Skywarp in particular because he had been pretty sure that this Autobot had been dead), were just too in awe by the fact that he appeared to be functioning and that he was just there, to be overly concerned with his appearance.

That would later be seen as a very big mistake.

"Ground control to Major Tom," Sideswipe said unevenly saluting Prime with the wrong hand. His leader just eyed him dumbly like he was seeing a ghost.

Everyone else was just as shell-shocked, none of them quite believed what they were seeing.

But that was what Bluestreak was for; because Bluestreak always had something to say about everything. "Sideswipe? Sideswipe! You're alive!"

It took a moment but Sideswipe turned his head in Bluestreak's direction and addressed him.

"Well. Obviously yeah. Or I wouldn't be standing here." He paused seemingly in deep contemplation. "Or maybe I'm a ghost. But if I was a ghost there'd be funner people to haunt then you guys. People like Skids. I don't think we pay enough attention to Skids. He'd appreciate a good haunting," Sideswipe stated with an odd sort of irrational clarity. "But I don't think I'm a ghost. Ghosts don't get headaches, and I'm getting a headache. They don't feel anything. I mean, that's just _sense_. And if they did, well snap, they'd be getting the raw end of the deal."

"Huh?" Bluestreak tried comprehending the strangeness that had come from Sideswipe's vocals.

"They should join a union," Sideswipe continued on with complete enthusiastic seriousness. "To make sure that their ghosty integrity and their right to not feel anything is kept intact."

Sunstreaker, up to that point, had been borderline comatose. However just hearing his brother's voice was doing the trick of rousing him from the land of head trauma induced hibernation. "Sideswipe?" he muttered barely above a whisper.

Sideswipe didn't seem to notice his brother right off the bat. That in its self should have raised the red flags.

Ratchet plowed right through the danger signs. "Primus on a fraggin' pogo stick! Where the hell have you been you little monster?" he raged.

He was relieved, oh how he was relieved to see the mech functioning. In fact joy was bubbling up from the cold depths of his spark like a geyser at the sight of the front-liner. However Sideswipe had made Ratchet _worry_. That alone was a worthy enough transgression that deserved scowl and a vicious verbal thrashing

Sideswipe's processer seemed to be on a delay. It took him a good three seconds to drop his salute and reply. "What? Oh. Hi, Ratchet."

He said it in a thoughtful tone which was alarming. There was no sarcasm, or obnoxious joy in his voice. There was just acknowledgement.

The other Autobots cowered away, not wanting to be any closer to the volcano that was Ratchet then they had to be.

"Shut your trap, Bucko. I don't want to hear it right now!" Ratchet bitterly spat.

Sideswipe just fixated on Ratchet, only half comprehending what was going on. He was a little distracted by the sharp pain that was starting to lance squarely through the middle of his forehead. Still something in his basic programming was aware of the fact that ignoring Ratchet was a very bad thing to do. "But I-" He was sharply cut off.

"You, Dumbass! While you were gallivanting off doing Primus knows what, we were stuck at the Ark wasting time and resources to find you! We thought you were dead Sideswipe. DEAD! Sunstreaker risked his life because of you! To SAVE you! And here is your moronic self perfectly ok!"

Understanding started to dawn on the red mach. He was getting yelled at. Why was he getting yelled at? He didn't do anything that warranted it. Nothing that had happened was his fault (Maybe the towing incident. The evidence was inconclusive in his opinion.)

Sideswipe had dealt with so much in so little time, and he wasn't sure he could handle the Ratchet cherry topping off the crap sundae that was his life at the moment.

"You don't understand," Sideswipe pleaded desperately. The ache in his head only grew. The pressure was getting to be too much. Everything was feeling hot and suffocating.

"What should stop me from giving you a full-scale beat down? Do you have any idea what we've gone through in order to find your lazy ungrateful aft?"

That was about all Sideswipe could take. At that moment he had had only one foot firmly grounded in sanity. He had been one incident short of shorting out then and there and Ratchet's words had been the straw that broke the camel's back. Lazy? _Ungrateful_?

Sideswipe reached his mental threshold and fell quite squarely into Crazyville.

**Complete mental break down commencing in three, two, one…**

**Fizzle.**

A horrifying sound erupted from Sideswipe's vocals. A terrifying mixture of rage, frustration and confusion all rolled up into one spark wrenching cry.

And as soon as it happened it stopped. Sideswipe's face went scarily blank.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Even Ratchet was too in shock to continue his berating.

Sideswipe decidedly felt it was his duty to annihilate the silence. So he did. "Halt die fresse! Halt den Mund! Ich hasse euch alle ihr Gott verdammten Hurensöhne!"

The mechs stood in an icy fear motionless, soundless, as if the slightest twitch might set off Sideswipe into a homicidal rampage. Other then Sideswipe's haranguing no one said anything.

Once again, that's what Bluestreak was for. "What's he saying?"

"He's cursing in German," an unexpected voice piped through the crowd. Sunstreaker was still not all there but the abrupt presence of his brother seemed to be pulling him out of his catatonic funk. "He feels English isn't angry sounding enough."

"That doesn't sound like German."

"He just switched to Norwegian. That's why," he continued somewhat airily.

Sideswipe proceeded to curse out everyone on the field using every language that he knew. It ranged from Cybertronian, to several Earthen languages like Icelandic and Basque, to several off world languages that would even leave Soundwave somewhat perplexed. The Autobots were of the opinion that Sideswipe was just starting to make words up.

Inferno covered Blustreak's audios much to the displeasure of the young gunner as Sideswipe's verbal castigating got more explicit.

After running down the line Sideswipe finished spectacularly in the one language everyone on the field knew. "DO ANY OF YOU PRIMUS FRAGGIN JERKS KNOW WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH?"

"Woah. Where did he have the time to learn all of that?" Someone asked in awe at the red mechs unexpected language skills.

"Odds are, he just learned the curse words. That's what I do when I go somewhere new."

"Yeah… Wait. Why am I talking to a Decepticon? Shut up, Skywarp. Go die."

"Back at ya, Groundling."

"Oh, Sideswipe," Sunstreaker said blearily, finally snapping out of his delirium. He rolled to his knees and rose. "When did you get here?" He asked rather calmly.

"RRRAARG!!!"

"Sideswipe, please compose yourself. You're acting irrational," Prime tried placating the Lamborghini.

Sideswipe whipped his head toward his leader and gave him a downright nasty look. No salutes for Prime this time. "Shut up."

"What?" Optimus couldn't have heard that right. He looked to Ratchet for confirmation. The medic was just as thunderstruck as the rest of them were.

"Sideswipe. Are you alright?" Optimus asked out of complete concern.

"Shut up!" Sideswipe's voice was taking on a tone of warning.

"Sideswipe. Calm down. Do you realize-"

"SHUT UP, PRIME!"

Everyone on the field went dead silent. Well, more dead silent then they already had been. Even the wind in the desert stopped blowing.

Like a drunkard Sideswipe turned quickly from his leader and stumbled to his brother. Sunstreaker was finally somewhat aware of what was going on around him. On his face there was a slightly panicked look that read as "I should probably get out of here now. Right now." Even though he was obviously aware of the fact that he probably chose a really bad time to be conscious, he couldn't move. It was his brother after all.

His deranged, half mad brother.

And so Sideswipe shuffled over to his twin, slapped one hand on the golden mech's shoulder and said, "Sunstreaker." A look of stone cold seriousness was on his face. "I need a hug."

"What the hell?" Sunstreaker sneered.

Not moments ago he had been irrationally concerned about his sibling. So what if he was extremely relieved and happy that his brother was alive? That didn't mean he wanted to get all mushy about their odd reunion. This wasn't a soap opera. There'd be no sappy confessions of brotherly love and concern if he could help it. That and quite frankly he didn't want Sideswipe's grime getting on him.

He laid down the law. "I'm not hugging you."

The pitiful woes-I look on Sideswipe's face morphed into one of raw wide-eyed fury. His fingers dug in Sunstreaker's shoulder guard denting the metal. "Hug me dammit or, so help me, I'll shoot you."

Sunstreaker threw an arm awkwardly over his raving brother's shoulder and pulled him in for a discomfited hug. Sideswipe sighed and dropped his head so it rested against his brother's shoulder.

They stood there for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. Smartly no one commented on the odd scene of one-sided brotherly affection but Sunstreaker's self-consciousness was nearing a plateau anyway. "Sides? Sides. This is ridiculous. And you feel really warm."

"I hate boots," was the muffled reply. "And humanity."

Alarmed Sunstreaker held his brother away at arm's length. "Primus, you feel really warm." His brother's armor was more than warm. It was boiling.

Sideswipe broke away from the hug without much resistance from Sunstreaker and drunkenly swayed toward Optimus Prime. The awe inspiring commander of the Autobot forces tried to channel Prowl so he could come up with some logical response/escape plan. He tried to _move_ but his treacherous legs failed him. All he could do was stand there like a gaping fish as the train wreck known as Sideswipe closed the distance between them.

Stopping just short of being in Prime's personal bubble Sideswipe gave his commanding officer a pitiful look. Kicked puppy pitiful. It hurt to look at. "Prime?"

He tread with caution. "Yes, Sideswipe?"

"I need a license."

"A license of what nature?"

"A driver's license."

"Sideswipe, you… _have_ …a license." Each word came out awkwardly and sounded like Prime was extraordinarily confused. He really wished Prowl were here.

Sideswipe stared, optics glazing over with a slightly demented look. "What?"

"I acquired registered driver's licenses for us all so we'd comply with Earthen road law." Prime was still put off by the unhinged look on Sideswipe's face. "You didn't read the memo. You never read the memos."

Then again Optimus wasn't entirely sure his second in command could handle this level of absurdity. Odds were it would break Prowl pretty good.

That's when Sideswipe started to laugh hysterically. He doubled over, held his sides and he laughed, and he laughed until it actually looked like his own mirth was causing him pain. Then abruptly his hysterics transformed into what sounded like sobbing which made absolutely no sense since Cybertronians could not cry in the conditional sense of the term.

It was highly uncharacteristic of Prime, but he looked like he desperately wanted to ditch everyone to save his own hide. None of the other mechs were faring any better either but then again none of them had a Lamborghini having a total breakdown at their feet.

So Sideswipe sobbed and he sobbed, and when he could sob no more he went back to fits of laughter. "I gotta- gotta tell Subitron this!" Sideswipe gasped out, succumbing to hilarity again. Optimus could only watch his young soldier in horror.

"Subitron?" Prime was a hair past worried at this point. "Ratchet. Ratchet, get over here now please."

By then Sideswipe had sauntered over to Skydive. Before the Aerialbot could flee Sideswipe had grabbed him firmly by the shoulders and reeled him in so they were almost touching foreheads. Impressive given that Skydive was way taller.

The look on Sideswipe's face was one of heavy solemnity. The one on Skydive's face was brick-shitting fear.

"Wheeljack." Sideswipe gave Skydive (who was clearly not Wheeljack) a little shake for emphasis. Then with the utmost gravity in his voice said, "I want Hydraulic locks."

"Eh, what? Sideswipe. I'm not Wheeljack."

That little bit of information obviously didn't stop Sideswipe from believing what he wanted to believe. If he thought Skydive was Wheeljack, then Skydive was Wheeljack. End of story.

"Hydraulic locks. On my alt form," he elaborated. "Really difficult ones to break. And flame throwers in my doors. Ones that go off when anyone but me tries to open them. Yeah that sounds good."

"Well," Skydive wasn't sure if he should be negotiating with what appeared to be a clinically insane melee warrior, but saying nothing didn't appear to be an option. He decided to go along with Sideswipe's delusion. "I'll see what I can do."

"No!" Sideswipe abruptly yanked him closer so their foreheads clanked together.

Skydive let out a very unmechly yelp.

"You won't try. You will. Make it. _Happen_." Sideswipe punctuated each word by giving Skydive a little shake.

"Uh-alrighty then. I guess I'll go get started on that. Right away. So could you, ya know, let me go so I can do that, uh, thing for you?"

Sideswipe stared at him for another good ten seconds before giving him another shake. "Hydraulic locks. Don't forget."

"Yeah I-"

"Only I can activate them."

"I got that, so-"

"And flamethrowers. I want flamethrowers. In my doors. My _doors._ "

"I know, Sideswipe."

"Make sure you remember."

"Don't worry. I'll remember."

"Seriously." Shake. Jostle. "Don't forget."

"I promise. I won't forget."

"You better not forget." The look on Sideswipe's face was still serious though somewhat hazy and removed. "The flamethrowers. Or the locks. Cuz, ya know, I'll break you otherwise."

The way he said it, what with the blandness and lack of any sort of anger or threatening quality, made that statement absolutely terrifying.

"D-Don't worry. I'll get everything right."

"Okay." Pause. "Cool. Thanks, Wheeljack. You're a pal."

"Yeah. Sure."

Ratchet had been trying to sneak up on Sideswipe, a powerful sedative in hand, as the warrior had been distracted with trying to shake apart Skydive.

Unfortunately the moment Ratchet decided to lunge at Sideswipe was when Sideswipe decided to relinquish his grip on Skydive. The Aerialbot dropped like a lead brick and scooted back as far as he could as fast as possible.

Erratically Sideswipe swung around and caught Ratchet by the wrist before the medic had a chance to jam the powerful sedative into a port in his neck. Ratchet looked like a deer in the headlights. He had clearly not expected the warrior's reflexes to be that good in the state he was in.

"Ratchet," Sideswipe said rather serenely. "I was stolen, I have a traumatic stain in my CPU that needs a severe bleaching, I was towed and impounded, I smell like hobo, and I have just endured 48 hours of cross country hell, a good fraction of the way with a swarm of cop cars after me. So do _not_ mess with me right now."

Sideswipe let go and pivoted again so he was facing the rest of his Autobot comrades.

He looked like hell warmed over, and yet his face was strangely calm as he raised both of his arms into the air and announced, "And that's our show, ladies and gentleman! Remember don't drink and drive! Without a license! You'll get impounded! Oh and Skywarp, I am going to kick your ass later and whatever is left of you is going through a paper shredder. Good night Portland!"

And then the last forty eight hours finally took its toll. Sideswipe conked out and dropped to the ground with a heavy thud.

It took a good ten minutes of people trying to figure out what the hell had just happened before anyone moved. It took another ten before anyone was brave enough to find out if Sideswipe was still alive.

The Seekers at that point decided that all of the insanity that had gone on was about all they could handle. If this was the sort of thing that happened when the Autobot twins were involved they were probably not worth the trouble. So Acid Storm was made to gather up Sunstorm before Skywarp had a chance to roast marshmallows over him and they left soon after.

Whatever Megatron decided to dish out to them for the failure didn't even matter to them at that point. Nothing was worth this insanity.

In the end Prime did get to keep his one sociopath. His neurotic sibling was a bonus.

* * *

 

"I am in total shock that Sunstreaker doesn't have some kind of cerebral cortex damage after all of this. He must've been hit over the head several times in the last couple of days," Ratchet noted. The golden mech was in a deep recharge, this time without the aid of anesthetics. He was deemed perfectly healthy (for Sunstreaker anyway) by Ratchet giving the medic time to focus on his unquestionably less put together twin.

"You know what. Why did we interfere? Sunstreaker was this close to actually doing something none of us have been able to do." Gears queried.

"You mean getting his aft kicked by the Decepticons?" Ratchet groused. "How is that something we haven't managed to do? I say we accomplish that pretty damn regularly."

"He took out a whole fleet of seekers. Byhimself."

"Look Sunny's good but he's not _that_ good. If he went one on one against Megatron he woulda gotten ripped in two. You know that," Inferno interjected.

"He took out a fleet of Seekers. By _himself_."

"It's not that impressive. They're just seekers. Most of 'em are just background noise," Inferno noted.

"Yeah. I sort of forget that most of them exist," Bluestreak added. "I honestly thought that Starscream's trine was it. Really when did they all get here? When exactly did that happen? They're like mushrooms. You get rid of one and two sprout in its place. Like that green seeker from earlier. Where did he come from? Or the one on fire. How could we have not noticed the fact that Megatron has a seeker that's on fire?"

"Alright, that's it," Ratchet started somewhat irritated. "I've had enough of the peanut gallery. Everyone who's not a patient or Prime get the hell out of my Medbay. Unless you're volunteering yourself for spare parts. If that's the case by all means feel free to stay."

Inferno and Gears left in a hurry.

Bluestreak blinked. "What about my chemical burns?" He pointed to the fine charred layer on his side, courtesy of the green seeker he had tackled.

"Just go see First Aid. Over there." Somewhere away where Ratchet wasn't working on repairing Sideswipe's superficial damage. He didn't mind Bluestreak all that much but he didn't want to deal with the inevitable prattle while he was working on a blacked out Sideswipe.

Bluestreak sighed and complied. Seconds later they heard him chattering to First Aid off in the distance.

"So," Prime ventured.

"So?" Ratchet didn't look up as he extracted another gnarly twig from one of Sideswipe's peds. He looked at it in disdain before dropping it in the growing pile next to the berth. There were enough scrubs and branches accumulated in the mound to make a decent sized bonfire.

"Is he going to be all right, Ratchet?" Optimus inquired with mild concern.

"Yeah, our red nitwit will be ok." Ratchet yanked a particularly stubborn branch from a joint.

"Why was he acting, you know, like-"

"Like a raving lunatic?" Ratchet flicked the wood and it landed in the growing pile of kindling. "Sideswipe, in the literalist sense of the term, was having a complete meltdown. All the stress he's had to deal with for the past couple of days, together with his dangerous lack of energy put a massive strain on his systems until they finally didn't know what to do anymore. His internal heating system crashed which caused a spike in his internal temperature. That basically fried his circuits and is most likely why he started acting psychotic. He'll be completely normal when he wakes up." A pause. "Well normal for him anyway. Right now he just needs a nice long recharge more than anything."

"Well it's good to hear that Sideswipe will be back to being…well, Sideswipe. How long until he comes out of recharge?"

"It's hard to say. He's already woken up twice. It was kind of annoying actually. He kept saying over, and over that he wanted to see-"

"Sunstreaker?"

"No. His jetpack."


End file.
